The head of the agency overseeing the state’s massive flood recovery efforts appeared today before a legislative committee and defended his recent decision to redo the procurement for the contract to manage the state’s $1.6 billion Restore Louisiana program.
Pat Forbes, who heads the state Office of Community Development, told members of the Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security that canceling the procurement and starting over was the best way to protect the state against legal action that could delay the process of getting a contractor in place and getting funds to flood victims.
“The sole reason we did it this way was to prevent delays to homeowners and to try to reduce the cost,” Forbes said.
Cost estimates to manage the program in the original proposals ranged from an estimated $250 million to $350 million, considerably more than the state wants to pay.
Forbes also told the committee that despite information to the contrary—which has come from Republican elected officials at the state and federal level—no federal recovery dollars are actually available yet for flood victims to access. Forbes told the subcommittee the money should be available by mid-April, about the same time he hopes to have a contract in place with a new program manager.
Questions about the contract surfaced earlier this month, after the state selected a team led by IEM from among five teams that submitted proposals in late February to administer the program.
The team that finished second to IEM, PDRM, challenged IEM’s eligibility with the Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors on the grounds that IEM did not possess a Louisiana commercial contractor’s license at the time of its submittal. A legal opinion from the board’s attorney opined that in fact a state residential contractor’s license was needed, which effectively rendered both IEM and PDRM ineligible.
Though the LSLBC’s legal opinion was not binding on the Office of Community Development, Forbes said starting the process over was the best way to move forward.
“We are not bogging ourselves down in the arguments associated with the RFP because that to us is the highest risk for delaying the program,” he said.
Sen. Bodi White, R-Central, who chairs the subcommittee, also raised questions about the makeup of the selection committee that originally awarded the deal to IEM. He noted that one of the five committee members worked for a nonprofit organization and that another is a union leader, Louisiana AFL-CIO President Louis Reine. White also questioned why neither Forbes nor anyone from the Office of Community Development served on the selection committee and suggested that the committee members may not have had sufficient expertise to properly evaluate the proposals.
Forbes replied that his office provided technical assistance to the selection committee. White, however, says he’s still not satisfied and wants more information from the agency about the way the award was handled.
“I thought OCD should be part of the process because they’re responsible,” White said. “I’ve never seen a committee that was made up of individuals of nonprofits and registered lobbyists make a decision on a $1.6 billion expenditure. … It doesn’t pass the smell test.”
—Stephanie Riegel
