1 week Ago
Prior to Wednesday's Executive Council meeting Gov. Kelly Ayotte and the Executive Council celebrated the designation of New Hampshire POW Day with war heroes and Army veteran Edward Ted" Parker, 100, seated, and Air Force veteran Hubert Buchanan, standing to Ayotte's right. The Executive Council narrowly approved a six-year, $18.
5 million child welfare contract Wednesday, but not before one member accused a top state official of trying to exploit the tragic death of 5-year-old Harmony Montgomery to win the vote. After tabling it two weeks ago, the council voted, 3-2, to hire Deloitte Consulting LLP of New York to create a new child welfare tracking system, known as Granite Families, that will replace the legacy New Hampshire Bridges system that the state has had since 1997. Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Weaver said the current program has child protection workers doing most tasks on paper.
Weaver said this lack of real-time tracking capability was cited during the trial of Adam Montgomery, who was convicted last year of murdering his daughter, Harmony, in 2019. The child's body has never been found. Adam Montgomery was sentenced last May to 45 years to life in prison for second-degree murder.
“The recommendation (to improve child welfare tracking) came up during the Harmony Montgomery case,” Weaver told the council. Councilor David Wheeler, R-Milford, opposed the contract and protested Weaver bringing up Harmony's name. “I think it’s horrendous that we exploit Harmony’s tragic death that if this had been in place that wouldn’t have happened,” Wheeler said.
“That was personal error, policy error. I think it’s tragic to blame it on a computer that she died.” Weaver denied she had said that.
“I am saying the system allows for improvements in identifying safety issues in that program; that is not to speak with anything else that happened in that case,” Weaver said of Montgomery. “Some of the critical information that would have been at the ends of the staff (in Montgomery’s case) wasn’t there at the time.” Councilor John Stephen, R-Manchester, himself a former HHS commissioner, led the opposition.
He pointed out that the contract proposal goes back to 2021 and there should have been more than two companies bidding for this work. “We have picked winners and losers; I don’t like that as a councilor,” Stephen said. Since leaving state government, Stephen has been a health care consultant to other states.
He is not a fan of Deloitte’s track record. “This contractor has done this across the country, coming back with higher change orders,” Stephen said. Councilor Karen Liot Hill, D-Lebanon, said the vendor has pledged to meet the price it quoted three years ago and to go out to bid again risks even higher costs for the taxpayer.
Weaver agreed. “I do not think or expect that if we go out to rebid this the costs would be what they are here today,” Weaver said. Councilor Janet Stevens, R-Rye, said the system upgrade is long overdue.
“We have to do it for the kids. We have to protect the kids,” Stevens said of the contract, which has an option to renew for five more years after six years. Councilor Joe Kenney, R-Wakefield, became the deciding vote and grilled Information Technology Commissioner Denis Goulet, who backed up what Weaver had said about the deal.
"I think it’s a low risk,” said Goulet, who had 30 years of IT experience in the private sector and now a decade doing government work. The contract wasn't written to favor Deloitte or any other company, Goulet said. “They (Deloitte) have done this before; they have shown success in the past.
I give it an 8 (out of 10) or more on my confidence level," Goulet said. Kenney’s vote moved the contract forward. Funding is evenly split between state and federal grant money.
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