AB 1250 provides common sense standards

Having dedicated my career to working in eligibility for human services programs, I am greatly dismayed by the portrayal of our dedicated county workers in The Bee’s July 25 editorial, “Democrats cook up one of their worst legislative turkeys ever.”

Alleging that public services should be outsourced based on claims county workers cannot be fired is not only patently false, but takes square aim at civil service, one of the few remaining pathways to the middle class.

If The Bee had done its job to inform readers rather than repeating the talking points of extremist, anti-worker organizations, it would have found these facts:

The same common sense standards in AB 1250 have been on the books for decades, shining light into state government contracting, while still allowing an enormous amount of public work to be done by the private sector.

At the last count, in 2012, $34 billion in open contracts were on the state’s books. Libraries and schools have been brought under the same, sensible transparency, accountability and performance standards without impinging on agencies’ ability to outsource.

There is simply no justification for counties to be able to operate in the shadows. Central Valley taxpayers deserve the protections in AB 1250.

This story was originally published August 3, 2017 at 12:32 PM with the headline "AB 1250 provides common sense standards."