As we previously posted, the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) pretty much always gets what it wants from Montgomery County Council politicians, particularly when it asks for approval on water/sewer rate hikes for the upcoming fiscal year. These rate hikes hit your wallet and mine and increase the cost of living for each and every resident of this county.
WSSC also appears to have a lot of debt / leverage on its books, as evidenced by Fitch, one of the Wall Street credit ratings agencies, issuing a warning. A recent MoCo Council staff report stated that “Fitch retained a negative outlook [for WSSC] based on leverage that may exceed or remain near 10.0x for the next couple of years.”
Instead of really asking tough questions and stopping any further rate hikes from hitting residents, the MoCo Council continually gives in and just approves WSSC requests for rate hikes on water and sewer. The result has been approval for rate hikes going back some 17+ years (not consecutively, but darn close). On and on it goes. In presentations to the County Council, WSSC claims it is middle-of-the-pack compared with other large metro areas in terms of per-gallon delivery charges, but being “middling” isn’t what residents or rate payers want. They want the best delivery of reliable, clean water for the dollar – and WSSC continually erodes that dollar by making the same amount of household water more and more expensive.
Poking around the WSSC website, I found this interesting annual report issued by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which has audit staff imbedded at WSSC. A review of last year’s (September, 2022) OIG Annual Report shows that some pretty major gaps and / or control weaknesses appear to exist in WSSC’s Procurement Office and in their processes. Here is a screen shot from pages 16-17:
“The Procurement Office will create and utilize a checklist to verify all solicitation documents, including Conflict of Interest Affidavits, are received and reviewed during the evaluation process”.
So were Conflict of Interest Affidavits not being retained and reviewed, consistently, under the prior process? This kind of language should not give anyone the ‘warm and fuzzy’ feeling that WSSC procurement is really running a tight ship. We are talking about millions of dollars from the capital improvement budget literally “flowing” out of WSSC here to various state and local contractors for a whole bunch of projects… everything from cement work to engineering to landscaping and drains. Even office supplies are procured for thousands of dollars by WSSC.
Shouldn’t this kind of major control weakness be addressed in house first, then independently checked and verified, prior to any rate hike request being “approved” by the Montgomery County Council, who did so “unanimously”?
More to come.
Related posts:
Why Do WSSC Water Rates Keep Getting Hiked? And Why Does the MoCo Council Not Bat an Eye?
A Property Tax Hike, But By WSSC? Fitch Ratings Revision for WSSC Shows What Could Be in Store for MoCo Residents
Is WSSC Serving the People of MoCo or Companies & Lobby Shops With Donor Ties to Local Democrat Politicians?