Letter to Vermont Legislators: Montpelier, we have a problem

3/26/2014 UPDATE:  For whatever reason ; )   since this was originally published, the Agency decided to issue the rebid.  I'd specifically asked the previous week.    The original post here has been re-edited to reflect the Agency's decision to rebid, though we noted the agency has inserted language to protect it from appeals.

There continues to be a lack of independent review of the Agency's bid process.  Hopefully they will have representation this time from the cities and towns and schools who actually receive the services.  When I was at Massachusetts DEP, the DPGS (procurement office) reviewed our bidding procedures, and appeals were considered part of the "checks and balances".  It remains to be seen how Vermont deals with the prospect of scandal.

After restating our request as a "FOIA", we got the state costs paid under the new contract for the first quarter.

Wait what?  Let's zoom in..

Cost per pound under the new state contract:  $0.42 (if you leave in the 10 days of the injunction, when Good Point charged 28 cents per pound).   Recall that ANR staff testified, under oath, in court, that the difference in cost was negligible, less than a penny per pound.

Attached is an open letter to the Vermont Legislators who are considering the 22 pages of red tape aimed a the Independent Plan, which would become statute (law) rather than a negotiated settlement once ratified.

Heavy Hey Yah Vermont (Teach Me Lies) #Ewaste

)

This is our song.  (Outcast)

Obadiah Parker (acoustic cover)

posted by Michael Schulte.  

Sounds truthful.  

but what about... teach me lies?  Nigeria's top video below.  Nigeria has Internet.

Cultural Gulfs in Developing Markets #3: Congress Fiddling Around with First Use Doctrine

This week, Bloomberg's Adam Minter covers an important new front in the battle to repair your stuff.   Seems the CTIA (a cell phone group, similar to the Anti-Gray-Market-Alliance) is seeking sponsors for a bill to keep a geek from unlocking a chip so you can use your cell phone with a different carrier.

The cell phone unlocking is an important story. IFIXIT.org has previously sounded the alarm about your right to fiddle around with your used gadgets.  And everyone should get to know the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation).   Very smart, following the core (first use doctrine) for longer than anyone.

Most Poor People are not a threat to most Rich People.  The two percent get along great with 90% of the 98%. It is the rapidly rising poor, the ones who have figured something out, and are on a trajectory to compete with the rich, that get smacked.  And there's no bigger threat than dirt poor geeks reverse-engineering, copying, innovating, and remarketing materials in competition with Big Electronics.  This is where Sony meets its Terry Gou, where HP meets its Simon Lin, where IBM meets its Steve Wozniak.  The first born of the emerging markets have a pesky way of becoming rivals to capitalist monarchies.

Breaking Good Point: At e360 Degrees

We are winning in the "big picture".   Yale's E360 (Environment 360) author Mike Ives doesn't call it "fair trade recycling", but gets researchers Josh Lepawsky, Ramzy Kahhat, Eric Williams and Nitin Gupta to voice their opinions that the "E-Waste" story needs to get corrected.

"As far as I know, there has been plenty of legislative action to ban trade and informal recycling," but insufficient action to develop alternate approaches, says Eric Williams, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology...

(Just remember all the people whose companies got closed and lost their jobs and were defamed between 2002-2012.  The contract manufacturing factories (run by former staff from Proview, BenQ, Viewsonic, Wistron and Foxconn) never really needed advice, assistance, or help from the Great White Father.  Those were most of the exports, and most of the experts.  Those companies forced closures explains why ITC found so little actual overseas shipping after 2011.)

At least the Yale Environment 360 story is on the path to a correction, a very welcome and long awaited one.  "E-Waste" is dead, long live E-Recycling.

Speaking of corrections....   Forgive me if I don't have the strength to dance.  We are winning the war, but not the battle for Vermont.   Six months after USA Today ran a story putting Good Point Recycling at the center of the export debate, we find ourselves teetering at a precipice.  "Guess I got what I deserve".

YOU ARE HERE

Guess that's all I have to say
Except the feeling just grows stronger every day
Just one thing before I go
Take good care, baby, let me know, let it grow... 
(Badfinger, Baby Blue)




It is crunch time at Good Point Recycling.  And by that I don't mean operation of balers.  It is time for putting exports of scrap metal and plastic and used electronics into perspective. I'm looking at the growing necessity of laying off 50% of the staff at Good Point Recycling, and have invited staff from the Vermont Department of Labor to the plant next week.   We plan to keep on fifteen positions, less than half the weekly payroll.   And that's being optimistic about the State of Vermont actually allowing us to run an independent "opt out" recycling program for manufacturers.  And optimistic that the manufacturers will get us contracts and pay for the work on a timely basis.

Vermont Department of Labor staff will come on February 13 to brief the staff on options for "job training and placement" in Vermont.   But these are blue collar, physical workers.

You Are Here.  Sparta, Vermont.  Invisible from space, and just as important.    A black hole in space for investors to sink job creation money in.

Will the firing of half our Vermont payroll enough to keep ANR happy?   Evidently not.  Below is an email sent from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources (Kimberli Lutchko) yesterday.  They are going after the companies that are trying to user our Independent Opt Out Plan.  Notice how she blames Good Point Recycling for Vermont ANR's decision not to allow the Manufacturers to join the Independent Plan.

Procurement 101: Vermont E-Cycles Lessons

As the recycling program manager at Massachusetts DEP in the 1990s, I oversaw something like 40 contracts per year (if you include 03 consultant hires).  We went through one of the biggest bid challenges, for the Springfield Materials Recovery Facility, which saved the state about $1 million dollars per year by switching from an incumbent vendor.

We knew that if the incumbent vendor lost, that they were certain to challenge the bid, so I had lots of time with attorneys at MA DEP making sure that each step of our bid evaluation was transparent, and run by NASPO.org standards (National Association of State Procurement Officers).  (Link to Massachusetts Chapter 30B Guidance on Procurement)

The incumbent Springfield MRF vendor did appeal, and they even won an injunction keeping us from awarding the contract to a new vendor.  Even though the state was losing roughly $500,000 during the six month injunction, however, we saw our jobs as making a smooth and continuous transition, and further, to show that Massachusetts DEP did not even want to suffer the APPEARANCE of impropriety.  By NASPO standards, the appearance of shady procurement is just as costly to society as impropriety itself.  Once an injunction is granted, the best thing is to sit down, in full transparency, and let the protester's case be heard.

So we patiently worked with the incumbent vendor, in as professional a manner as we could, until the court hearing.  The court found The Massachusetts DEP's contract procurement process was valid and dismissed the injunction.  But like an appealed referee's call in an NFL game, no one accused anyone of doing anything in bad faith.  And at this time, I'm not making any noise about bad faith in Vermont.

You will see in the news cycle a number of stories about the State of Vermont's E-Cycles ("e-waste") contract procurement, which my company, along with NRRA.net, administered for the past 27 months, with generally rave reviews.   The truth is that before the Vermont electronics recycling law had even passed, my company had already set up the infrastructure, and had a turnkey proposal in place in 2011.

This is not the time or the place to air our concerns about the new 2014 contract, or the merits of the two proposals the state decided between.  But this is a time to look at Vermont Procurement laws, and ask why "safety railings" are not in place to keep vendors and regulators from having it out in the press.  That's what NASPO standards were created to avoid.

"Does the injunction save the state money while providing the public assurance to a fair review of the process?"  If the answers to both questions is "yes", why fight the injunction?  Save tax money, hear the appeal out, and start the new contract when you've won.