County Board approves negotiations to fix HR
screw-up
Contract awarded without competition

Jan. 2, 2008 -- The County Board voted, 14-5, to negotiate with Vitech Systems Group to implement a retiree benefits component not included in a major human resources and payroll system upgrade.

County Supervisor Lynne DeBruin, who represents Story Hill on the board, voted against the no-bid deal. Also voting no were supervisors Mark Borkowski, Toni Clark, Michael Mayo and James White.

DeBruin said before the vote that she did not believe that Vitech was a problem vendor, but that she was not comfortable awarding the contract without seeking proposals from competing vendors.

Adding the component will cost about $500,000.

The roll-out of the new Ceridian HR system was plagued with problems and ran far behind schedule.

The retiree benefits piece was dropped from the original installation plan when a former county official decided the Pension Board should pay for it, DeBruin said in an interview.

"Apparently he decided on his own that was not going to be county government's responsibility, but that it's going to be the Pension Board's responsibility," she said. "The Pension Board says, 'Go jump in the lake.' And the Pension Board goes out and gets a legal opinion that says 'Go jump in the lake.' "

The county is responsible for paying for the system, she said.

The Ceridan payroll system finally went live in December and "it wasn't too horrible," DeBruin said. About 100 county employees reported problems with their paychecks, she said.

"The county put in emergency procedures for that sort of thing," she said. "Going live in December -- God forbid -- this is Christmas, and people losing their paychecks would not be a good thing."

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