WurfWhile

This Naperville Sun article is an interesting story about how the all-Republican DuPage County Board works - or doesn’t. In a nutshell, there’s a roughly $800,000 to $950,000 contract for providing meals to the DuPage County Jail. Aramark, a national company that has provided food to the jail for 21 years, recently submitted a “deficient” bid that was thousands less than a bid meeting the requirements from competitor A’viands. Aramark also has, in round numbers, given $15,000 to DuPage elected officials since 1999, from hundreds (County Board members Brien Sheahan, Debra Olson and Michael McMahon) to thousands (State’s Attorney Joe Birkett, Sheriff John Zaruba and County Board Chairman Bob Schillerstrom) per candidate. To be fair the amount of money is far from unusual and in some cases relatively modest. Throw into the mix a specific menu, tray sizes that affect what you can put on them and an argument over whether the bid should just meet nutritional standards (which DuPage had until last year and would reduce costs by over $100,000) or fit the serving trays (at additional cost). Stir it up and you have the battle of the fish sticks versus the fish patties, or as County Board Member Jim Zay describes it,

“‘This is insane … the more people we get involved, the worse it gets…. This has been costing us hundreds of thousands more because we’ve been screwing around with it.’”

I guess that’s what you have - people “screwing around” instead of actually accomplishing something. Nobody’s perfect - but come on guys. On the heels of an unprecedented budget disaster and unprecedented tax increases (property taxes and sales tax) you’d think that at the least the county board would try to keep up appearances. You’d think.