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>Nobody’s checking who signs the contracts or what friends they pay. Someone’s keeping the taps open and the invoices flowing. Every night in a room means another bill sent straight to the public.
Same goes on in the Blue States.
Massachusetts - From Globe.com
In the scramble to accommodate thousands of migrant families, the Healey administration has approved scores of hastily arranged contracts with little transparency, sometimes handing out multimillion-dollar deals without competitive bids, a Globe review of contracts found.
The documents, provided in response to Globe public records requests, offer a window into the breath-taking scope of the state’s rapid and often piecemeal approach to accommodating thousands of homeless families — about half of them migrants who made their way to Massachusetts from the southern US border.
The state is now housing, feeding, and caring for 7,499 families — around 23,000 people.
Massachusetts will spend about $932 million — three times what was budgeted — on emergency shelters for homeless families this fiscal year. Lawmakers negotiating next year’s budget — when the cost is again expected to surpass $900 million — are still trying to find the money to pay off this year’s tab.
The Globe reviewed nearly 80 state contracts, as well as recent invoices from individual hotels and providers. State agencies have not yet provided the Globe some contracts whose costs are reflected in those totals. Still missing are agreements with the National Guard, which provides staffing in 21 of the 75 hotels being used as shelters, and for the large overflow shelters in places like the Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex in Roxbury and a former Cambridge courthouse, which were established after the state capped the family shelter system at 7,500 families.
State officials have, in fact, been reluctant to provide much transparency at all about the shelter system. They have restricted visits by the media and declined to provide the addresses or even the names of the hotels being used as shelters. They point to the speed with which they had to act and also concerns about protecting families’ privacy; neo-Nazis staged demonstrations at some shelters last summer.
But the lack of transparency also means watchdogs cannot hold the administration accountable for how the money is spent or for the living conditions of the migrants now within their care.