GA tax system still not working

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Tax system still not working

Web posted Apr. 22 at 10:20 PM

By Sylvia Cooper and Frank Witsil Staff Writers

After three years, countless overtime hours and more than $1.3 million of taxpayers' money, the city of Augusta still does not have a tax record system that works.

The city will get the software to operate properly possibly by June, Information Technology Manager Clifford Rushton says confidently. But even he acknowledges that the project already has wasted more than a quarter of a million dollars.

The total cost to taxpayers -- including payroll hours spent trying to fix the system and lost efficiency because of its problems -- is impossible to estimate, he says.

The problem began after the city decided to upgrade the tax record software in 1997 with three separate data management packages that were never linked together. Mr. Rushton says the city could have bought a better system but did not to save money.

As a result:

The tax assessor's office could not produce accurate information for the tax commissioner's office

The tax commissioner's office could not collect about $2.8 million in overdue taxes

The clerk of the court's office could not maintain records the public could trust.

Real estate professionals say the consequences are dire. The inadequate records expose them to tremendous legal liability, they say. If the records aren't right they can't get title insurance, and if they can't get title insurance, the banks won't lend property buyers money.

``We haven't had it happen yet,'' says veteran real-estate abstractor Mike Pearre. ``But we're all aware of the fact it could happen. And that's why we're all tiptoeing around this thing, because we're standing on a land mine -- waiting for it to go off.''

The problem

Users say the current system is not reliable or efficient.

``It's slower than our older system,'' says Lauree Hamilton, a paralegal and real-estate abstractor. ``At this time, the way it is set up, we can use it to do our job, but it is not as good as what we had. It causes more work.''

She and others fault the information technology department for waiting until there was overwhelming evidence the system didn't work to seek input from the professionals who use it every day.

The licensing and inspection department has been working through glitches that caused the system to calculate fees incorrectly and failed to print reports, Licensing and Inspection Director Rob Sherman says.

``There are just a lot of little things that, added together, made it a hard system for us to work with,'' Mr. Sherman says. ``It all goes back to that. It wasn't well-managed.''

However, once the departments realized the companies were not going to deliver the software as they promised, it was too late to turn back, he says. All the city could do was make the best with what it had.

``It's been a disaster,'' says Stewart Walker, who also works in the licensing and inspections department. ``The employees can't do their jobs. The new system was put in to improve efficiency. But there is no efficiency.''

The decision

Before the city upgraded, it was using a UNIX system bought in 1990 from InfoCell, a Raleigh, N.C., company. That company was acquired by Plano, Texas-based EDS. The system cost about $3 million, Accounts Payable Supervisor Lisa Sherrouse says.

The UNIX system handled the records of several departments, including the tax assessor's office, the tax collector's office and the clerk of court's office.

The UNIX system worked, Mr. Rushton and others say.

But as the clock ticked down to 2000 -- when the Y2K bug was supposed to bite -- the city decided to get a system that would do more for them. The UNIX system they had was not Y2K compliant.

According to Mr. Rushton, he and representatives from each department reviewed their options and selected three vendors -- CPS, Revenue Systems Inc. and Team IA Inc. The city agreed to pay $1,377,771 for the software and computer hardware.

Superior Court Clerk Elaine Johnson said she had wanted to buy a program from Disc, whose president, Gary Yates, was a former Superior Court clerk in Gwinnett County. That system was more expensive, but it was certified through the Georgia Superior Court Clerk's Authority, she said.

She went along with buying the Team IA program, which failed to meet four deadlines. When the new system finally did go online in November, the ``nightmare'' began. Records for the month of October had disappeared. Fortunately, Mrs. Johnson had been running the old system and had microfiched the records.

``We were working 10 and 12 hours a day,'' she said.

The system

The city signed three contracts:

Dallas-based CPS was supposed to install new software in the Richmond County Tax Assessor's Office for $331,721. But after two years and $225,019, it did not work. City Attorney Jim Wall wrote the company a letter in December. He informed CPS it had not met its contractual obligations and the city would not pay the remaining $106,702 that was due.

After that, CPS refused to provide any technical support.

The company also filed for bankruptcy protection, Mr. Rushton says.

The tax assessor's office gave up on CPS in January and installed new software from the Georgia Revenue Department called GAP. The new system, Mr. Rushton says, was not as good as CPS, but it worked. It also cost the city nothing. The state paid for it.

GAP, as it turns out, also was a system the city could have had all along. It was rejected initially because the decision-makers believed it was inferior, Mr. Rushton says.

Atlanta-based Revenue System Inc. was supposed to install two software programs in the Richmond County Tax Commissioner's Office -- a text-based system and then a graphic upgrade to replace it, according to Mr. Rushton. But the company never installed the upgrade.

The city paid all but $61,408 of the $227,303 it earmarked for the deal.

Recently, the city agreed to pay the rest of the contract if RSI makes some additional modifications to the system. But the city does not plan to buy the graphic upgrade the original contract called for, Mr. Rushton says.

Lexington, S.C.-based Team IA was supposed to install software in the Clerk of Richmond County Superior Court's Office. It was the most expensive software package of the three the city bought; the software and some additional hardware cost $818,747. The city still owes $58,208.

But because the software was installed four months late, the company will be assessed a penalty of $200 per day per application, Mr. Rushton says.

The solution

It is difficult to pinpoint who or what is responsible for the problems because everyone involved is pointing a finger at someone else. Many officials blame Mr. Rushton. But he says many departments were involved in making the decisions. He blames the companies that sold the software for the problems.

Mr. Rushton acknowledges that any software conversion can be a ``nightmare'' for the user. Three conversions at once is even worse, he says. But he says the city and the vendors are close to resolving the system's problems.

``We're getting this to work,'' he says.

Some offices have had to adapt to the software instead of adapting the software to the office, Mr. Rushton says. That's what the tax assessor's office did to accommodate GAP.

There are still problems, but he said he believes they can be worked out.

http://augustachronicle.com/stories/042300/met_045-4830.000.shtml

``We haven't quit,'' he says.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 24, 2000


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