THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2017
WORLD IN BRIEF
Associated Press
GOP bill unlikely to settle
passionate health care debate
WASHINGTON — The nation’s passionate debate about the
role of government in providing health care for citizens and pay-
ing the costs is unlikely to be settled by the legislation newly
revealed by House Republicans.
With Republicans now controlling the White House and both
chambers of Congress, the bill would drive government policy
down routes long advocated by conservatives. The course cor-
rection would take at least two years to get rolling, and probably
longer to show definitive results. If it falls short, it would give
rise to a fresh set of health care grievances.
The Republican legislation would limit future federal fund-
ing for Medicaid, which covers low-income people, about 1 in
5 Americans. And it would loosen rules that former President
Barack Obama’s law imposed for health plans directly purchased
by individuals, while also scaling back insurance subsidies.
Republicans say their solutions would make Medicaid more
cost-efficient without punishing the poor and disabled, while
spurring private insurers to offer attractive products for the esti-
mated 20 million consumers in the market for individual policies.
But Democrats say the bill would make many people unin-
sured, shifting costs to states and hospital systems that act as pro-
viders of last resort. Individual policy holders might be able to
find low-premium plans, only to be exposed to higher deduct-
ibles and copayments.
Trump’s new travel ban comes
without the chaos of first one
WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump signed
his first travel ban with scant warning and little planning seven
days into his presidency, he meant to signal he was a man of
action. After the lawsuits, chaos at airports and international crit-
icism, Trump’s rewritten travel ban sent a different message: The
White House has learned some lessons.
The Trump administration’s unveiling of its revised restric-
tions on travel and refugees was deliberate and cautious, an
implicit acknowledgement of some of the unforced errors from
the first rollout. The executive order was announced by Trump’s
Cabinet officials, some of whom felt cut out of consultations on
the earlier version. It does not go into effect immediately, giving
the world time to assess its impact.
Council: Councilor
‘couldn’t be prouder’
Continued from Page 1A
Though Mayor Arline
LaMear has expressed sup-
port for Astoria’s Hispanic
community, she said in
December that the city would
likely not seek sanctuary
city status. Gutierrez, who
endorsed the final draft of the
resolution, advised her that
the designation could polar-
ize the community.
‘Please be safe’
City Councilor Cindy
Price said she “really couldn’t
be prouder” to approve the
city’s inclusivity resolution.
“I think that the cur-
rent immigration efforts that
are being made are cruel,”
she said. “They go beyond
what we have known for
many years throughout
Republican and Democratic
administrations.”
She urged the immigrant
community “to do every-
thing you can” to comply
with the law and become
documented. Undocumented
immigrants with families,
and those caught in the jus-
tice system, should “make
plans, just in case, because
this is not a great time,” she
said.
“This resolution, really,
is something that shows
our support for our immi-
grant community but cannot
do much,” she said, adding:
“ICE doesn’t need to have
local law enforcement help
them apprehend people. They
know where you live. They
know where you work. They
know how to find you. They
have access to all the public
records. So please be safe.”
City Councilor Tom
Brownson, who said he
agrees with Price’s assess-
ment, said one of his constit-
uents expressed concern that
the resolution, which cele-
brates “immigrants and refu-
gees of all nations,” does not
distinguish between “legal”
and “illegal” immigrants.
The councilor said he sus-
pects others in the commu-
nity are sympathetic to this
view, but “in my opinion,
it’s not the city’s business to
make this distinction.”
“It is more important to
make clear that we support
all the people that contribute
to the good of our community
and our city,” he said.
THE DAILY
ASTORIAN
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6
5A
Audit: ODOT contracts still
subject to gamesmanship
cheaper ways of completing
projects.
Agency has
long recognized
problem, but
done little to fix
Not new issues
By NICK BUDNICK
Capital Bureau
A decade ago, state inves-
tigators found that Oregon
Department of Transportation
contracting had become a cyn-
ical sport for one highway con-
struction company — the exec-
utives there submitting low
bids, then wagering over ways
they could increase project
costs to boost profits.
While that case is old his-
tory, a new state audit of ODOT
suggests that its contracting sys-
tem remains vulnerable despite
a decade of warnings from the
department’s own employees
of contractor gamesmanship
and fraud.
The audit released Mon-
day by Secretary of State Den-
nis Richardson found that the
department fails to employ
methods to track “unbalanced”
bids, meaning those with unre-
alistic line-item amounts meant
to boost profits.
More than 90 percent of all
ODOT-run projects completed
from 2011 to 2015 included
unbalanced bids, and a quar-
ter of those later featured cost
overruns, auditors found.
Significantly, the report
echoes the criticisms of a recent
$1 million consultant’s review
of the department meant to
address concerns by the Leg-
islature. The consultant’s study
noted ODOT’s frequent con-
tract overruns and said that
compared to other large agen-
cies that contract out construc-
tion work, ODOT’s contracting
was “worst in class.”
The new audit comes as
state lawmakers weigh whether
to approve new fees and taxes
on Oregonians, such as a gas
tax hike, which will be spent on
hefty road and bridge contracts
meant to address a backlog of
unmet needs.
The Secretary of State audi-
tors’ critique of ODOT bidder
gamesmanship did not come as
news to Director Matt Garrett,
who has run the department for
more than a decade. In fact, the
new audit’s findings are strik-
ingly similar to those of a 2008
report on unbalanced bidding
issued by ODOT’s internal
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Oregon Department of Transportation Director Matthew
Garrett speaks last year on the Lewis and Clark River
Bridge in Astoria. An audit released Monday by the Sec-
retary of State’s Office says Department of Transportation
contractors often lowball bids to win contracts, then in-
flate costs through contract change orders.
auditors — suggesting that the
same issues remain.
In 2008, the ODOT audi-
tors said new software to track
unbalanced bidding could save
millions of dollars for a rela-
tively minor upfront cost.
The department’s response
to the latest audit — which
makes a similar recommenda-
tion about software — closely
echoes the department’s
response a decade ago. It ques-
tions the audit’s methodology,
but agrees with the recom-
mendation to closely track line
items in the bid through to proj-
ect completion.
New audit findings
The Department of Trans-
portation spends about $400
million a year on construction.
In the five-year span reviewed
by the Secretary of State audi-
tors, ODOT oversaw 413 con-
struction projects that cost $1.8
billion.
Oregon uses a traditional
low-bid system of contracting
in which bidders on projects list
the expected cost and quantities
for line items in the project —
such as asphalt, flagging costs
and trucking.
But to win the bid, con-
tractors sometimes lowball
quantities of particular line
items, accompanied by a high-
er-than-realistic price per unit.
That paves the way for a win-
ning low bid that then can
be inflated through contract
change orders, auditors found.
In fact, 61 percent of the
projects reviewed by the Sec-
retary of State had one or more
unbalanced bid items that were
at least double their estimated
cost, according to the audit.
Meanwhile, contractors can
lowball other line items, pricing
them at 1 cent, to keep overall
prices low.
ODOT doesn’t deny the
system allows this.
“Contractors may make a
token bid (i.e., penny bids),
front-load bids, or price-unit
bids with large variations from
the final engineer’s estimate in
an attempt to minimize risk and
maximize profits while keeping
the overall bid low,” admitted
ODOT Highway Administra-
tor Paul Mather in his response.
At the heart of the problem
is that the department uses dif-
ferent software at the different
stages of project cost estima-
tion, bidding and project com-
pletion, making it impossible to
track patterns in how bid line
items change over time.
“If agency leadership
decides to implement enhanced
tracking and scrutinize unbal-
anced bidding, the state could
potentially realize signifi-
cant savings by avoiding proj-
ect cost increases. Inaction
will continue the status quo of
incomplete data that prevents
ODOT from evaluating unbal-
anced bidding that can lead to
project cost increases,” accord-
ing to the new report.
Mather, in the department’s
offical response, questioned
the auditor’s methodology say-
ing it failed to show that unbal-
anced bidding played a role in
the department’s cost overruns.
He noted that the total cost of
the projects came in under
their estimated cost, reflecting
that ODOT sometimes bene-
fits when contractors figure out
In 2003, then-Gov. Ted
Kulongoski signed a $2.5 bil-
lion transportation package
intended for new roads and
bridges, with the bulk of the
work intended to be contracted
out.
Over the years, however,
problems arose with con-
tractors, including with Ross
Brothers — a firm that the Ore-
gon Department of Justice in
2008 accused of civil racke-
teering using lowball bids and
padded billing. That’s the firm
where executives were accused
of making wagers over what
change orders they could per-
suade ODOT to approve.
The following year, the state
and Ross Brothers settled when
the company agreed to dissolve
without admitting wrongdoing.
In the wake of the settlement,
ODOT Director Garrett vowed
victory. He said the agency was
making changes to ensure Ross
Brothers types of problems
didn’t happen again.
But internally, records show,
the department resisted recom-
mendations from its own audits
on how to address the problem
of unethical lowball bidding.
Mary Hull Caballero, now
the city of Portland’s elected
auditor, formerly worked at
ODOT’s internal audits unit.
In 2008, she did the research
for the audit that similarly
called for investing in a soft-
ware tracking system to moni-
tor patterns of unbalanced bid-
ding. She raised the specter of
whether unbalanced bids and
poor contract tracking were
contributing to an “inflation
spiral” of overspending by
ODOT.
Hull Caballero found other
states had reported good sav-
ings from software sold by the
American Association of State
Transportation Officials. Mich-
igan, for example, more than
made up their initial costs in a
single year.
In its response, ODOT
responded that it didn’t have
money for the software, but
would form a “task group” to
look at the recommendation.
Now, the new audit and the
$1 million consultant’s review
indicate the department’s con-
tracting continues to be a
problem.
ODOT, for its part, says it
already is on top of the issue.
Fire fees: If classification changes, landowners will be notified
Continued from Page 1A
lots and 600 landowners. But
some of the landowners did
not know their lands had been
reclassified until January.
The annual property tax
fee assessed to owners of for-
estlands in the Astoria dis-
trict is $1.21 per acre. Own-
ers are charged a minimum
assessment of $18.75 each
year. A $47.50 surcharge can
be added if property owners
build additional structures on
their land.
About 70 landowners gath-
ered for a public meeting in
Seaside in February, many of
whom expressed their frustra-
tions in testy exchanges with
officials.
Affected landowners will
be notified by mail and phone
LISTINGS
A - Charter Astoria/ Seaside - L - Charter Long Beach
if there are any changes made
to their property’s classifica-
tion, Goody said. While the
public meeting’s date and time
is not set yet, it will take place
at the Astoria District Office
at 92219 Highway 202 in
Astoria.
Evening listings
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