Report 2022-120 Recommendation 4 Responses

Report 2022-120: Orange County Power Authority: Increased Board Oversight Is Needed to Improve Its Operations (Release Date: February 2023)

Recommendation #4 To: Orange County Power Authority

To ensure that OCPA acts in its customers' best interests when contracting for services, by September 2023 OCPA's board should strengthen its procurement processes by instructing staff to perform periodic evaluations of contractors' performance and provide those evaluations for the board's review when staff request approval of new contracts or contract amendments with those contractors.

60-Day Agency Response

Staff has developed an OCPA Contractor Performance Evaluation Form for use with new contracts or contract amendments. This Form will facilitate periodic evaluations of the contractor's performance and will be included in the staff report for the board's review when staff requests approval of new contracts or contract amendments exceeding $125,000.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Fully Implemented

On June 21, 2023, OCPA's board revised OCPA's procurement policy to require that staff perform evaluations of contractors' performance and include those evaluations in reports for the board's review when requesting approval of new contracts or contract amendments with those contractors in excess of $100,000. OCPA also provided us a template it plans to use when conducting contractor evaluations.

As we discuss under Recommendation #2, the board revised OCPA policy to require board approval of all contracts over $100,000. Further, as we discuss under Recommendation #5, OCPA's board clarified in its procurement policy that all dollar thresholds in the policy apply to contract amendments. Therefore, if OCPA follows that provision and the prohibition in policy against splitting purchases, this new evaluation requirement will address the issues we identified in the audit report about the board's receiving incomplete information about the performance of large contracts when approving renewals of or amendments to those contracts.

All Recommendations in 2022-120

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.