Teeing One Up for the Slashers

The Matt Blunt administration has begun advertising for a contractor who can supplement his team's considerable expertise in slashing the number and types of services provided to mentally retarded and developmentally disabled Missourians. The latest contract appears intended to assist in the Governor's planned closure of state-run habilitation facilities that serve severely disabled clients of the Department of Mental Health

The Office of Administration website recently went public with Request for Proposal (RFP) for something called "Organizational Change Consulting Services" -- which is bureaucratese for service-cutting privatization gurus. The RFP is deliberately drafted to provide advantage to a Blunt-favored contractor called The Columbus Group, which specializes in preparing state-run facilities for closure by cutting back staff and implementing lower levels of service for the state's clients.

Though the bid request is full of jargon, some portions are illuminating. For example, it describes some of the expected duties of the "Organizational Change Consultant":

"...the contractor shall develop strategies for the consolidation of human resource departments in the state agency's habilitation centers enabling increased efficiency, standardization of human resource practices, and the redeployment of personnel..."

Administrative 'consolidation' and 'redeployment' are on the prospective consultant's To-Do list because the governor's plan is to close habilitation centers from the inside without even getting the legislature to go along (MOHELA sale, anyone?). If he can "consolidate human resource departments" --read 'get rid of those departments in the targeted facilities'-- and "redeploy personnel" from those facilities into others, the heavy lifting of closure will already be done.

And Governor Blunt knows that The Columbus Group is more than capable of tearing Mental Health facilities down, since he's already hired the state's Director of the Mental Retardation/Developmental Disability division out of Columbus's ranks. MR/DD Director Bernie Simons used to be a consultant for Columbus, and was the hatchetman for state-run centers for the disabled in Massachusetts before his arrival on the scene in Missouri.

Can this governor do anything on the up and up? He's trying to strip services from the disabled on the sly, trying to use outside consultants to do his wet work and keep his own hands clean, and trying to use a jury-rigged RFP to hire those consultants. Truly pathetic.