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Supervisors recommend Aramark commissary contract amid questions about prior month-to-month extension
Summary
The committee recommended approving a commissary and inmate trust accounting contract with Aramark (guaranteed $650,000/year or 42.5% of sales) but flagged that the prior vendor operated month-to-month for 43 months without Board approval; the controller said revenue contracts are harder to flag in current systems.
The Budget & Finance Subcommittee on May 13 recommended the Board of Supervisors approve a contract with Aramark Correctional Services to operate the sheriff's jail commissary and manage inmate trust accounting.
Maureen Gannon, chief financial officer for the Sheriff's Department, said the concession contract guarantees a minimum of $650,000 a year to the inmate welfare fund or 42.5% of commissary sales, with no cost to the department. The procurement proceeded through a competitive RFP process and Aramark was the intended awardee.
The budget analyst and committee raised oversight concerns about how the previous contract with Compass had been handled. Mr. Rose said the prior contract had originally been a two-year agreement with a 12-month extension that expired Oct. 31, 2005, but the department continued the relationship on a month-to-month basis for 43 months "and according to Ms. Gannon, the contract was never submitted to the board of supervisors for approval due to administrative oversight." He recommended approval of the new contract while flagging the lapse in internal controls.
Monique Samuda of the Controller's Office explained why revenue contracts can evade automated flags: because contractors remit funds to the city rather than the city making payments, those agreements do not always appear in outgoing payment systems that trigger review thresholds. She said the city's purchasing and financial systems are dated and suggested a manual oversight solution until system upgrades are implemented.
Gannon said the sheriff's department has created an internal database of contracts, revenue and expenditure, with renewal flags to help prevent future oversights.
The committee moved to approve the resolution and forwarded it to the full Board of Supervisors with the analyst recommendation. The committee record did not include a formal roll-call tally in the transcript; committee members voiced approval during the hearing.
