ALC-Review
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All right, members, if you'll find your seats, chair sees a quorum, we'll get started. Chairman Filippo,
do you have any comments you'd like to make before we get started
today? All right, guests, if you'll settle down a little bit as well. We'll start with item B on the agenda.
department transformation and transportation trance it says transportation but it's transformation and shared services procurement rule summary of changes ms
purvis and mr armstrong will you join us please okay members if you will i'm going to
explain to you uh some of the information you have in front
of you on this item you were previously provided rules to review for procurement this goes back to the new procurement acts that were passed in the last session these are rules for office of procurement we've already passed our committee rules however as of earlier today subsequent to a meeting that occurred yesterday there are a few changes to the rules I am told that they are not significant but I've asked miss
purpose and mr. Armstrong to come and explain these to you briefly since the information was just given this to us today but you do have it in front of you if you have any questions if you all would introduce yourselves to the committee for the record and please begin the explanation of let's
Speaker 7
12:53
start with the changes okay Ann Purvis chief of staff for transformation and
Speaker 8
13:00
shared services Edward Armstrong office of state procurement with the department of
Speaker 9
13:03
transformation and shared services David with real council office of state
Speaker 7
13:13
procurement And first of all, we appreciate the opportunity to clarify any questions you had prior to presenting to this committee. One of the things we want to point out is most of the changes that we are making today better align the rule to what the statutes were passed during the last session. And so there's not a significant change overall, but from a practical standpoint, we needed to point all these out to you so we can answer any questions to those.
Speaker 12
13:41
The first change within the rules that were going to be presented is going to be on Rule 1911-203-E. We wanted to make sure that that language followed the statutes that basically that primarily medical fees and physician fees are not something that are currently part of
Speaker 7
14:04
the procurement process. So that's just a clarification. We had used a different terminology, so we went back to the statute and used the statutory language there.
The second clarification and the rules that are currently being
Speaker 12
14:24
presented can be found on 1911. It's on page 6, and it's going to be
Speaker 7
14:34
the highlighted section. Where one of the concerns is to make sure even those delegation authorities are too even small to those buyers that are buying for small procurements and that they're adequately trained as required by law. So that's a clarification on that
particular provision. Small procurements and competitive bidding. So that also kind of clarifies that there is required training, so we made those changes in order to make sure that properly reflected what was passed during the last session.
Speaker 12
15:23
The next change you can see in what is identified as Rule 10, and that's going to be on page 11 and the highlighted provision. We had
Speaker 7
15:39
presented a shell but it should be a May because that's what the statute has is a May and so we changed
Speaker 18
15:49
it back to match the statutory language.
Speaker 12
16:03
The next provision that we have a change
Speaker 7
16:11
to has to do with cooperative agreements,
Speaker 12
16:20
and that is in Rule 1 of 1911-249. That can be found on page 21.
Speaker 7
16:38
This is a process that we needed to have verifiable economic justification. We do currently require that. What we need to have to do is make sure that we adequately train the agencies and have some sufficient commonality across when we ask for this information, what we actually are including in this economic justification. And so that's the purpose of this is to qualify that that is a requirement and it has to be included. The
Speaker 12
17:12
next change that you'll see is 1911-265-D, and this is on page 23.
Speaker 7
17:27
One of the provisions passed during the last session allows for a reporting of any of the ongoing contracts you have from a year-to-year basis with that do not have a material change this is to clarify that a material change is going to be deemed any amount that's an increase in the contract amount and that contract amount is going to be what's ever going to be presented on the annual basis so if the previous contract was a hundred dollars and I mean a million dollars let's put it toward review and the increase in that is a million dollars
and a penny it'll come through a normal review process in front of this body and so anything that's under the proposed annual amount that it was awarded that would not be subject that would be reported but it's any increase amount and the annual contract amount that's being presented or you see the other things that will trigger what we deem to be a material change and that's what we work through with with the bureau as well and there may be some issues that come up later
this evening as you look at these contracts and we agree that we're going to change our process within the office of state procurement to to mirror
Speaker 12
18:42
this this change the next change we have has to do with and you'll see this change it has to do with performance based standards of contracts that's on page 26 and this has to do with performance standards this is this mirrors the statutory language there
we've put that back in the one thing that we did remove is that we now will consider that any contract that is let needs to have
Speaker 7
19:07
some sort of performance standards and in emergency situations those performance standards may be very quick and to the point that's the purpose of an emergency that we need to make sure that you know in other words if you've got to replace an HVAC unit something of that nature that's sometimes that's an emergency procurement you know you that the performance measures maybe you need to replace that unit within a certain period of time so you're not going to have some detailed
performance measures but as as the more complicated contracts have we do want to have performance measures and sole source and also on those type of emergency procurement so we made sure we took out that language that we originally proposed and agreed upon that we need to have performance measures on all those contracts now there may be some sort sometimes I'm some of us are you know through our career have had to agree to federal contracts sometimes there's limitations on whether I can add any performance measures but we can also but we can absolutely make sure that contracts meeting the needs of
Speaker 12
20:03
the state of Arkansas so those are the kind of things that we took out there the 20 at the bottom page 26 we added the
Speaker 7
20:16
language without limitations because we wanted to make sure a solicitation conference wasn't limited to
Speaker 12
20:24
just the things that we'd previously included in that laundry list we did also strike some language in 1911 273 I'm sorry 1911 275 it deleted any we
Speaker 7
20:40
had proposed a sunset clause to an FOI
exemption however after discussions with the Bureau of Legislative Research we've determined that that's probably an extension that we don't have the authority to make so we went ahead and struck that language and we may be able to revisit that during the next general session. And I believe that that is all the changes that were made during the last discussions with the Bureau of Legislative Research, and we'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
All right. Thank you, Ms. Purvis. Members, I just want to restate these changes came from primarily input from the Bureau and a couple of members of the committee just wanted her to go back over those since we got them kind of a late hour you haven't seen them previously also just process wise just so you know these do go to the rules and regs subcommittee of council when they leave here so this is not a final chance to review or have input on them are there any questions on these rules
All right, saying none, they will be considered reviewed. Thank you. Thank
you. All right, that's item B. We'll move on to item C, methods of finance. Ms. Cathy, can
Speaker 22
22:06
you get us going, please? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have on the regular agenda two methods of finance, one for, both
Speaker 23
22:13
of them for ASU Jonesboro. They begin in your packet.
packet c page one is the letter from office of accounting on page two of that packet are the two methods of finance there's one for their village houses demo 294 195 they have university reserves for that and then asu jonesborough their education communications building for renovating that 350 000 and they note that they have university reserves for both of those and funds
We also have a supplemental agenda. You have a supplemental agenda, revised supplemental agenda packet there, that there are two methods of finance on that. The committee would need to suspend the rules in order to take those up. I will explain to you that there's a letter from DFA, Office of Accounting, for the two that were being submitted by National Park College, and then there's a letter from National Park College. Over the holidays, they submitted these to higher ed.
Higher ed had some questions about them and the university was not available during the holiday break and it was after the break that they were able to respond and they missed the deadline. So they are requesting to have these included on today's agenda in order to prevent a delay in the contract awarding process for these projects. I have
a motion to suspend the rules. I have a second. I have a second. Rules
Speaker 23
23:48
suspended. Then on the next page of that, you'll see the two for National Park College. One is for their
laboratory science project. It's $1,562,577 to expand the science and engineering labs. Also, they'll be able to provide some upper level courses. They note in their information that this is cash funds to cover this. I also want to note that they reported that that it would include 1.3 million dollars of money that the governor released from the development enhancement funds through the Arkansas
Department of Higher Education. The second one also for National Park College for their Fisher Building renovation, 2,453,700 dollars for retrofitting the first floors to house the hospitality and hospitality and tourism program and to relocate the innovate technology from an off-site location. They note that there are cash funds for funding that project and those are all of the methods of finance on today's agenda. Any questions members on the methods of finance
on today's agenda including the supplemental?
all right seeing none without objection this item be
Speaker 22
25:05
considered reviewed item d discretionary grants mr chairman we have discretionary grants from two agencies the first
Speaker 23
25:10
one on page one is from the department of health this is a grant with st bernard's for increasing breast cancer screening via mobile after hours weekend and work site events and activities the second page these are grants from the Department of Human Services. The first one is Arkansas Foundation for Medical
Care, an amendment for evaluating the state opioid response grant programs and outcomes. The second one with counseling associates to provide services for the medication-assisted treatment. The third one there was actually on the review agenda last month, so in December, so we're not reviewing that one. But on the next page, DHS has a third one, which is with Arkansas our Head Start Association, to facilitate collaboration among Head Start agencies. And so those are all the grants on today's agenda.
Any questions on these grant items? Seeing none, without objection, these items will be considered reviewed.
Speaker 23
26:12
Item E, service contracts. Mr. Chairman, on page one of item E, we have the OSP letter, and this comes over to the committee with the contracts that they send over for review. It notes that one of the contracts does not appear to have been properly solicited and being presented to ALC and the review subcommittee. That contract is a contract identified with that number ending in 479, 45790, sorry.
It's with ADEQ, and they seek ratification of a contract. All others appear to be lawfully procured. That emergency contract that we'll be looking at is on page 7, number 1. and when we get to it, I'll explain that contract. The other contracts that we're looking at, as the notes or the letter says, were lawfully procured, they begin on page two with the construction-related contracts. The Environmental Quality Department has an on-call professional services contract for a million dollars.
Military Department has three contracts there for environmental support services for amendments to existing on-call contracts for those. Number five is the state police adding $575 to a contract for architectural services. This is finishing up their Troop L headquarter facility in Lowell. On page four is state police also for Wittenberg, adding $719 on that contract for the other four sites around the state for architectural services for those troop headquarters.
On page 5 is UAMS. This is an original contract for architect and engineer services for renovation of the existing outpatient pharmacy. And number 8, UA Pine Bluff for Lawson Hall Project. Those are the construction-related contracts. All right, members, any questions on these construction-related
contracts? members I'm going to recuse from
this review action I've got a family member
involved with one of these contracts the item number four harbor environmental
Speaker 34
28:23
and safety all right members are there any questions or comments on any of these check all right seeing none and without objection these
Speaker 22
28:34
items will stand as reviewed the next set of contracts
Speaker 23
28:37
mr. chairman are intergovernmental contracts those contracts that are procured using that procurement method. The first one on page six is Economic Development Commission with the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences. This is an original contract, and this will be for reviewing the applications
for the Arkansas Rural Connect grant program. The second one, the Health Department with University of Mississippi Medical Center, and this is for receiving assistance in easing collections of electronics data for delivery to the Arkansas Stroke Registry. Those are the intergovernmental contracts on today's agenda. Any questions on the intergovernmental contracts, members?
All right, seeing none, this item may consider reviewed. Mr. Chairman,
Speaker 22
29:21
the next group of contracts are our out-of-state contracts,
and if I can refer back to
Speaker 23
29:27
our supplemental agenda again, you have another item there, a services contract. It's for DHS. Last month when DHS had a contract, they acknowledged that they had contracts within their MMI system that they were paying more than what had been legislatively authorized through this review subcommittee. And at that time, they were going to go back and audit their other contracts.
And they have one additional contract that they've brought to the committee today. Their letter that they've provided, which is on page 5 from DHS, to this committee requesting suspension of
Speaker 26
30:06
the rules in order for that contract to be reviewed and ratified
today. Members, I'd like another motion to suspend the rules to bring this item up, please. I have a
Speaker 37
30:19
motion. Need a second? Have a second. Thank
Speaker 23
30:23
you. On page six is the letter from DHS to OSP acknowledging that this is the contract for Medicaid Vision
services and they provide the optical glasses, lenses, frames, those kinds of things. They note that the contract's been amended several times but because of that problem with their system they have overpaid what has been legislatively reviewed for this contract. They also note that they have developed internal controls to prevent this in the future and then on page eight you see the actual contract amendment. This is a technical and general services contract, so you don't have
the full history of this contract, but you will see Amendment 7 for $4,277,518 is what they're asking for review of and ratification, recommended ratification to OSP. The other out-of-state contracts are in your regular agenda, beginning on page seven. The first one, ADEQ, with natural state environmental. This is the contract that is referenced in Mr. Armstrong's letter, where he
noted that there were contracts, a contract that was submitted today that was seeking ratification that was entered into orally with an emergency contract. Also, I want to point out in your blue packet, we're going to do a lot of stuff here, this contract, there's a letter there seeking ratification of this contract with an explanation from Secretary Keough. She states in this that in early January there was an emergency proclamation
regarding Trafalgar Road fire, and ADEQ began looking at cost estimates. Natural State submitted a cost estimate of approximately $300,000 for Phase I of the project, and that would be to build an access road and a weir pond at the site. Environmental Quality contracted with Natural State for construction of Phase I, and on or around March 20th, that work began. Um, Secretary Keogh also points out that discussions between ADEQ and Natural State regarding phase two continued, um, in reliance upon those discussions, albeit prior to the issuance of a written contract for phase two.
Um, and they went ahead and secured some heavy equipment and did some work prior to, uh, a contract just on a verbal authorization. Around April 20th, Bella Vista Property Association took control of the fire and the responsibility for corrective and remedial action at the site. Natural State was notified not to pursue work on Phase 2. They provided an invoice for costs associated with preparations of Phase 2 because no written contract, as Ms. Keough points out, for Phase 2 work was executed
between environmental quality and natural state. Environmental quality is currently without a legal ability to pay for these expenditures, and so they are seeking ratification from this subcommittee recommendation for a contract for Phase II in the amount of $381,294.45, which matches up with the invoices that were provided. Number two is DHS with MTM. this is an amendment to an existing contract for continuing the data management reporting services
number three is amendment for DHS for quality service reviews number four original contract for UA Fort Smith and this is for information management services and those are the out-of-state contracts on today's agenda all right members any
questions on item E3 out-of-state contracts i'll give miss kathy just
a minute to catch her breath all right not seeing any questions without objection these items will be considered review that brings us to e4 members that's page
nine in your packet um
Speaker 23
34:36
these are in-state contracts the first one uh career education rehab services for an armed security guard services original contract the second and Third are both for community correction. These are for transitional housing amendments. And on page 10 is National Park College, an original contract for legal services. And then we have number five, UA Fayetteville,
an original contract for hazardous waste disposal services. Those are the in-state contracts. Any questions, members?
All right, seeing none without objection, these items be considered reviewed item f reports and
Speaker 23
35:19
communications mr. chairman the first group of reports that we have f1 begins on page one of this packet these are the contracts that are submitted from osp with no material change we heard miss purvis mentioned earlier there's been
some discussion between this committee and osp about this the chairman would like for me to just briefly review the contracts that are on this report. There are some on here today that in future possibly would not be included in this report. The first one on page one, this is a contract for Arkansas Geographic Information System where they're adding $1.3 million to an existing contract. Number two is UAMS where they're adding $150,000 to that contract. Number three
is no money being added to a contract. Number four, Counseling Associates for Mental Health Services adding $20,000. Number five, another Mental Health Services adding $11,000 for Delta Counseling. Western Arkansas has an amendment for $92,000. Centers for Youth and Family has an amendment for $135,000. Northwest Arkansas on page eight has an amendment for $126,000. South Arkansas Regional has an amendment for $40,000.
Southeast Arkansas Behavioral Health Care has an amendment for $96,200. Southwest Arkansas has an amendment for $130,000. Washtenaw Regional has an amendment for $80,000. Counseling and Associates for $71,000. Ozark Guidance Center is amending their mental health services contract, adding $120,000. Professional Counseling, that contract's adding $160,000. contract number 19 is no dollar amount again the chairman wanted me to just make you all aware
of the amendments that were adding money to those contracts yeah members I
want to explain briefly why we asked Ms. Schmidt to go over those contracts this report is supposed to be items that have no material change and that's how it's been reported to us in the past staff brought it to our attention that many contracts as you just saw all but two in this report actually do have changes in contracted dollar amounts so senator
flippo and i believe that because of that these do have changes in contracted dollar amounts we wanted to bring those to your attention and take a review action on those items today in the future these items will not show up on this report they will be in with review items on the agenda as our other contracts that have changed amounts we've discussed that with osp and they're going to change their process internally some of the rules changes we discussed earlier match this process that i'm describing to you now so these items that have changes in amounts
will not be on this report. Senator Irvin, you recognize
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
38:32
for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I apologize. And I can visit with people, I mean, after the meeting, I just missed asking the questions about a contract
that we've already reviewed on E2, number one. It's on page six. Item
E2, page 6, number 1, it's Economic Development Commission on the Arkansas Rural Connect grant program.
And I know we've already reviewed it, so if the chairman would like, I can ask questions offline. I just have some concerns about our rural broadband and how this money is going to be used. If anybody's still here
with Economic Development Commission, would you please come up and let's go ahead and hear Senator Irvin's questions. Yes. Yep. We'll just.
Wait, wait just a second. Turn on your mic
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
39:49
manager with the department of commerce so thank you uh for the opportunity mr chair to ask these questions um so you know i know that there's been some a lot of discussion and differences of opinion uh strong differences of opinion about the threshold that was set uh with the uh population of 500 and above why do we need to spend $250,000 to be spent to this UAMS Institute of Digital Health and Innovation
when there's literally millions and millions of dollars available at the federal level and why can't this money be spent to help seed those programs out there for small towns and communities versus sending it through a contract what are they going to provide us that they can't already do on their own anyway well they're going
Speaker 50
40:40
to provide us with technical review for grant applications for the arkansas roll connect program so this contract is assumes that and no money will be spending there if this does assumption turns
out not to be the case but the contract assumes that we will be rolling out the arkansas roll connect broadband grant initiative you mentioned a population threshold of 500 that was the previous version of the rules those were taken down so we adjusted the rules in response to feedback and so there's now scope for a wider range of communities to apply for those funds and if that goes through and those rules are approved then we are going to need some communications engineers to be looking at the projects that are proposed by ISPs to provide
broadband to Arkansans so we don't have those staff on hand we don't have communications engineers working for the Department of Commerce who can review those applications and so we are planning to work with UAMS hoping to work with UAMS and the engineers that they have on staff so that they can review applications and make sure that projects are technically valid before we put state money into them so follow up
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
41:55
if i can i know that next week that usda is going to be
announcing some um federal money that's already been allocated um to a smaller community that did not require you know a whole new government program in order to um fulfill that grant application and to receive that federal funding from usda so you know i'm not sure if this is an appropriate expenditure
Speaker 50
42:25
okay well so as far as this contract goes this contract is for reviewing grant applications under arkansas real connect now if that program doesn't get stood up for
some reason then we just won't spend any money under this there's already been
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
42:41
some money why do we need another program that's my that's my concern why do we need this program when okay Then when there's federal grant money out there available and there are communities all across the state of Arkansas that know how to apply for federal grants, why do we need a state program when there's literally millions and millions of dollars available at the federal level? Okay. Why do we need a state program to do that?
Because these people know how to do this. I mean, they
Speaker 56
43:10
do it all the time. Well, it's actually pretty difficult, and we've worked with some pretty experienced ISPs who
Speaker 50
43:16
have tried to put together applications and sometimes had to pull them at the last minute. It's pretty difficult to deal with those programs, and it will take them quite a few years to... I'm optimistic that they'll meet a lot of the needs, but it may take a pretty long time, and in the meantime, a lot of people are really hurting for broadband service, so I think that's why we've been advocating standing this up. And I've tended to find that we've got a lot of support.
We got a lot of pushback on the last time, but it was not against there being that kind of a program. It seemed, as far as I could understand, that the pushback was specifically against limiting it just to the municipalities. And so we changed that. We made a change of course, and we heard the feedback that we got, and we adjusted course. And I think what we're presenting now, I'll be presenting it tomorrow at the Advanced Communication and Information Technology Committee,
reflects the input that we got from you and some of your colleagues in the first round. So we certainly appreciate the thought that was put into that feedback. Well, thank you. I'll stop you right there.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
44:24
That was driven by legislation that our body presented and
passed, and so what was recommended was not in line with the legislative intent of the legislation we passed so yes a lot of us did have a lot of issues because it was actually our initiative that drove that and it was voted on by this body and i don't think anybody voted
against it in the house or the senate right so so it's really important that those rules and regulations are consistent with the legislative intent of the legislation that we pass so there was big pushback there but again i go to the fact that i'm not sure that we need a state program when there are literally millions of dollars out there, and this money could go to these communities for seed money to hire the engineer studies and things like that on their own accord. So, I mean, this has already been reviewed, and I don't want to beleaguer this,
but I would just like to be on the record for being opposed to this, and I wish
we had caught it before you had reviewed it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you,
Senator Irvin. Thank you, sir. We're finished. Okay. All right, members. Sorry about that. Just to remind you where we were. I should have taken this motion first, but so we're back to what was the report on F1, but we went ahead and asked Ms. Schmidt to describe those contracts to you. If there are no questions on those contracts, then at this time, they will be considered reviewed without objection.
Speaker 23
45:54
Mr. Chairman, the next group of reports, beginning on F2, page 17, these are the contracts both below the threshold that have been executed by OSP. On page 21 is a report of critical emergency procurements that were made and being reported. There are three of those. um then on page uh in f4 you have the medicaid non-emergency transportation legislative report
from dhs that's the net uh report and then behind that you have the optum report on the assessments being done uh through dhs and those are all the reports on today's agenda all right any
questions on any of these remaining reports members
okay seeing none these reports will be adopted we have no items under item g to review no other business thank you for your time we're adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order - Comments from Chairs
B. Department of Transformation and Shared Services, Office of State Procurement
C. Methods of Finance
D. Discretionary Grants
E. Services Contracts for Legislative Review
F. Reports and Communications
I. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC - REVIEW, Jan 14, 2020 | Agenda | 2 | Official source ↗ |
| B Dept of Transportation and Shared Services Office of State Procurement | Exhibit | 92 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| C MOFs | Exhibit | 2 | Official source ↗ |
| D Grants | Exhibit | 3 | Official source ↗ |
| E Contracts | Exhibit | 10 | Official source ↗ |
| F1 F2 F3 · Reports and Communications › ** Per Act 417 of 2019 - Services Contract Amendments without a material | Exhibit | 23 | Official source ↗ |
| F4 · Reports and Communications › DHS Non-Emergency Transportation (NET) Contracts | Exhibit | 14 | Official source ↗ |
| F5 · Reports and Communications › DHS Assessments - Optum Contract Update | Exhibit | 6 | Official source ↗ |
| Revised B as of January 14 2020 | Exhibit | 30 | Official source ↗ |
| Revised Supplemental Agenda | Exhibit | 8 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative Andy Davis Chair
Unverified
Speaker 7
Speaker 8
Speaker 9
Speaker 12
Speaker 18
Speaker 22
Speaker 23
Speaker 34
Speaker 26
Speaker 37
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
Speaker 20
Speaker 48
Speaker 50
Speaker 56