Another troubling aspect to this company is that the increase of poverty and pressures to downsize government actually makes for good business. They say as much in their SEC report: “Our core health and human services business has benefited from steady demand over the last five years. We have not experienced any material adverse change in demand as a result of government budgetary pressures. We believe the critical nature of our services in helping governments provide and administer important safety net programs in the U.S., such as Medicaid, welfareto-work and CHIP, to the most vulnerable populations helps insulate our services from significant downward pressure, particularly during an economic downturn.”

Recently the Project on Government Oversight released a report concluding that the federal government actually pays billions more to hire private contractors than what it would pay current public sector workers to perform comparable work; a Heritage Foundation reports states the opposite. Analyses supporting both sides of this debate are plentiful, but there is little disagreement that over the past several decades, privatization of government services has increased dramatically and hundreds of billions of dollars are spent outsourcing public services.

Do we as Springfield and Sangamon County taxpayers care that we currently pay large salaries to top directors to manage city and county government departments, but we apparently need to pay more for outside consultants? Is anyone concerned that a private for-profit company like Maximus, which pays millions of dollars annually in compensation packages to a few top executive staff and board members, is earning that money from public coffers? Does anyone wonder why so little information was provided publicly about Maximus, the need for this audit, its scope of work and what guidelines will drive the process?

Perhaps it’s just me but I’m not sold.

Sheila Stocks-Smith of Springfield, who ran for mayor in the April election, is a special projects consultant.