Friday, March 02, 2007

State Treas. Richard Cordray Saves Over $700k

From a Treas. Office presser:

    Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray, acting with the support of fellow
    Board of Deposit members Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann and Ohio
    Auditor Mary Taylor, today exercised the State's right to terminate a
    2005 contract for a Financial Transaction Device/Cash Management
    Information System. Cordray's office has worked together with Key
    Bank to determine whether these information system functions, which
    Cordray's predecessor had decided to contract out, could in fact be
    performed by Cordray's office to minimize costs and save taxpayer
    money. Key and Cordray have now agreed that any further work under
    the contract is not necessary.

    The termination of this contract will save taxpayers up to
    $600,000 per year. The system created under the contract, through a
    subcontract to Govolution, Inc., was designed to allow state agencies
    to review all incoming electronic financial transactions on one single
    list. The system is still in development and to this point is not yet
    ready for use. Cordray has advised his fellow members of the Board of
    Deposit that with recent changes in IT staffing, this task can be
    performed internally within the Treasurer's Office at no additional
    charge.

And:
    Cordray's fiscal diligence concerning this particular contract
    also led to the discovery that approximately $170,000 in earnings
    credit was not applied to the State of Ohio's banking fees in 2006.
    Both the Treasurer's Office and Key Bank are working together to
    continue to review records for prior years to compile a total of the
    amounts.

Nice when a guy pays for his own salary (and then some) two months into the job. Wonder if Buckeye Institute will give him some sort of prize.

2 comments:

Jill said...

Exactly! Now THAT'S the spirit I was getting at!

Jill said...

And you know what! BI says that every Friday it's going to award a "Fiscal Pistol" moniker to someone who saves instead of wastes. No surprise that this week they gave kudos to a Republican, Matt Dolan who is at least in the Statehouse and they called AG Marc Dann their "porker" of the week. That's a shame - since Dann isn't exactly in the Statehouse. But I guess they mean more than just legislation? Or they don't know what they mean? I don't know what they mean exactly either.

But anyway - yeah - we should nominate the Treasurer for that award. I just sent in a waste tip - seriously. I told them that they needed to call out the House and Senate leadership for authorizing $250K for outside counsel so that they could sue Strickland over the veto. Since they just called Dann a porker for his spending on outside counsel, and Dann isn't even in the statehouse, well, I think this waste of Husted's falls squarely into what Eye says it wants to reveal.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.