Meh
Wednesday, Aug 5, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sun-Times…
Visit the campus of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and you’ll find plenty of signs that our first-year governor, Bruce Rauner, once was there and fondly recalls his time as a student at the Ivy League institution.
There’s the Rauner Special Collections Library. There’s the dorm called Rauner Hall. There’s the economics professorship Rauner and his wife also endowed, and the Rauner Scholarship Fund for Dartmouth students from the Chicago area.
And now, a few months after the college’s hugely successful alumnus was sworn in as Illinois governor, there’s also a state of Illinois contract for Dartmouth.
State documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show Rauner’s aides gave a no-bid deal to Dartmouth on May 4. There’s no record state government previously had given any contracts to Dartmouth.
The total amount of the contract with the college was only $20,000. Yes, that’s a drop in the Springfield bucket.
But again, even as Rauner pushes for deeper and deeper cuts in state spending, we see there’s money still to be found somewhere, somehow for those who know him or are doing what he wants done.
I’m told this is shopped oppo. Another reporter called about it earlier.
* The Department of Human Services responds…
The Illinois Department of Human Service’s Division of Rehabilitation Services is required to provide an evaluation of the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) program because of a federal grant the state receives. Illinois has been offering the IPS program since 2001, which was established under the direction of the Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center.
Discussions on this contract between IDHS and Dartmouth began in October of 2014. IDHS issued in late FY15 a $20,000 contract to Dartmouth College for an evaluation that’s required because of the federal grant. Dartmouth was selected because of its extensive and renowned work with the program. It developed the IPS model IDHS asked the college to evaluate. Since its development of this model, Dartmouth has conducted training and evaluations in multiple states and for multiple providers. State statute allows agencies to grant money to providers for services to evaluate how programs affected specific clientele.
No one in the governor’s office was involved in awarding this contract or was even aware of the contract until the media inquired about it.
- A fed up voter - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 11:53 am:
$20,000?
Barely more than 1 of the many committee Chair stipends Madigan hands out every year.
- Ducky LaMoore - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 11:58 am:
“20 grand man, and I still get to keep the rug. And they gave dude a beeper. Oh and I told them if it was during league play…”
- Juvenal - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 12:03 pm:
“Dartmouth…developed the IPS model IDHS asked the college to evaluate.”
Um, yeah…that should have disqualified them from evaluating it.
Forget about the $20K or Rauner connections. That’s like asking the CEO of McDonald’s to tell you how their hamburgers taste.
- SAP - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 12:09 pm:
Does not sound like there’s any there there.
- Challengerrt - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 12:11 pm:
The conversation is about a Governor who talks and does deep cuts to everything but allows a no-bid contract. Whether the governor’s office has anything to do with it or not, these things still have to be approved by someone in his elite group and have to sign off on it. I’d like to have that $20,000.00 how about you?
- A guy - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 12:15 pm:
Any ado is way too much ado on this.
- Austin Blvd - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 12:23 pm:
Kinda funny how Rauner continues to feign ignorance about everything. When Quinn did it, it wasn’t ok. Now it is.
- Not it - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 1:15 pm:
$20k is well below the minimum threshold to require a bid. Doing bids cost money too so it is considered wasteful to do them for minor contacts.
- Commonsense in Illinois - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 1:19 pm:
I agree with Rich…Meh.
Look, Bruce Rauner may be naive from time to time, but he isn’t stupid. He’s not going to chance embarrassment in his first year over a $20,000 evaluation contract.
- Downstate GOP Faithless - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 1:47 pm:
One of those things that is only issue because of the climate…and I am no fan of the Governor.
- Muscular - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 2:09 pm:
Dems and liberals trying to dig up meaningless garbage on someone they now hate.
- Nick Danger - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 2:10 pm:
Meh too.
- Mama - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 2:37 pm:
Ok… $20,000 is to small to bid. How many $20,000 contracts does our state have with Dartmouth College in New Hampshire?
- Mama - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 2:38 pm:
Does Gov. Rauner think no IL college can do the same work for $20,000?
- Sir Reel - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 2:48 pm:
$20,000 even. No bid. Alma mater. Yeah, this is on the level. s/
- Colin O'Scopey - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 3:36 pm:
No “there” there. Kinda, sorta petty to waste ink on this non-story.
Well, on second thought, since it is the Chicago Sun Times we’re talking about, not much ink was lost in the end.
- Colin O'Scopey - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 3:37 pm:
=Dems and liberals trying to dig up meaningless garbage on someone they now hate.=
Or perhaps an investigative reporter?
- alas - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 3:43 pm:
Absolutely nothing to do with Rauner’s Dartmouth association. Robert Drake MD and the research center are well-known to anybody who knows about IPS model implementation.
There’s quite enough to get riled about without dragging in extraneous stuff - which this clearly is. Meh indeed.
- whetstone - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 6:07 pm:
Also, come on:
“Sounds to me like coming up with what turned out to be an eight-page plan for evaluating a state program is something a university closer to here might have done, maybe even for free.”
A good evaluation takes time and professional skills (and eight pages can represent a lot of work). I’m not sure I’d want it done for free, much less had the gall to ask someone to do it for free.
- DuPage Dave - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 6:43 pm:
Pretty sad oppo effort when you can’t get a serious rise out of the Cap Fax commenters. Better luck next time, whoever you are.
- Macoupin Minority - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 7:03 pm:
$20K hardly “bleepin’ golden.” No where close to the negligent millions doled out by Quinn and his predecessor.
- ArchPundit - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 7:56 pm:
===“Dartmouth…developed the IPS model IDHS asked the college to evaluate.”
===Um, yeah…that should have disqualified them from evaluating it.
====Forget about the $20K or Rauner connections. That’s like asking the CEO of McDonald’s to tell you how their hamburgers taste.
Not at all.
===Within two months, Dartmouth had to come up with “a completed plan and timeline for the evaluation” of a department program that helps the mentally ill and developmentally disabled to get jobs.
This is an evaluation of the implementation, not evaluation of the model’s effectiveness. Most federal implementation grants require you utilize a model that is already verified to be effective. The feds still require the grantee to have an evaluator to see how effective the implementation of the model is. Dartmouth in such a case is the perfect place to have do the evaluation given the model was developed there.
article====Sounds to me like coming up with what turned out to be an eight-page plan for evaluating a state program is something a university closer to here might have done, maybe even for free.
Because it’s just magically free to have university staff do something.
You see universities and colleges have magical unicorns that crap dollars for them.
If you want to be a good steward of federal dollars, contracting with the university that developed the model makes the most sense. Assuming this is a formative and summative evaluation then Dartmouth is most able to help implementation and tell how effective the program is.
It’s also federal money being spent, not state money which the Sun-Times doesn’t make clear.
===Considering how much our governor has given to his alma mater — and how wealthy Dartmouth is — it could be a nice gesture for the Ivy Leaguers to tell our broke state that the work was on them after all.
Or they could be paid for their professional expertise. The unicorns crapping money not withstanding.
====No doubt we could give the $20,000 to a Rauner-hit social service program and rename that program after Dartmouth.
And then we would have to give the grant back to the feds which would certainly be more than $20,000 and I’m almost certain the grant came with money for the evaluation so it was money Illinois wouldn’t have had without the grant.
$20,000 isn’t that much for an evaluation and if you want to have government be accountable, you need evaluations. Do we use them as well as we should. Heck no. But we are better off with them.
Blasi didn’t oversee this contract–he signed it as the signature authority for the department, but this decision was made by civil servants way down the food chain and Bruce Rauner didn’t know the first thing about it. Which is as it should be.
This is just shoddy reporting by someone who has covered politics, but not actual governing within a bureaucracy.
- Anon - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 8:37 pm:
Gov Rauner’s daughter (yes, the one who attended Walter Payton) attends Dartmouth. Is the state contract related to her undergraduate work/research?
- Jorge - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 8:59 pm:
How ironic is it that Rauner has an economic professorship endowment funded by him when he doesn’t even grasp economics.
- ArchPundit - Wednesday, Aug 5, 15 @ 11:31 pm:
===Gov Rauner’s daughter (yes, the one who attended Walter Payton) attends Dartmouth. Is the state contract related to her undergraduate work/research?
Pretty unlikely given it’s affiliated with the Med school.