Statement issued by Ron Hay of ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel in response to story published by the Dallas Morning News:
Once the sensationalism of “Temp firm has inside track” (DMN – March 16, 2014) has subsided, what will have been accomplished? ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel has broken no laws but has had its reputation disparaged, sullied and otherwise harmed by the irresponsible inferences contained in the story.
Without resorting to a point-by-point recap of the inaccuracies in your reporting, I can say that ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel performed the function we were engaged to deliver. Nowhere in your article is our performance questioned. If you talk with other agencies for which we provide similar staffing services you will find only our record of exemplary service.
If the intent of your “exposé” was to ferret out the questionable behavior of others or even to question the existence of the North Central Texas Regional Certification Agency (NCTRCA), there has to have been a way to do this without the libelous inclusion of my company in your story. Our record of growth and expansion in both public and private sector contracting is impeccable, and is reflective of my own personal standard of integrity.
ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel is a good, thriving business that provides a needed service to its clients. Our record of satisfactory performance is reflected in our ability to successfully – through the competitive bid process – earn opportunities to demonstrate our competence. Given these facts, “Temp agency has inside track” can only be labeled as distortion, designed to inflame rather than inform, calculated to harm my business without foundation. That is both irresponsible and unacceptable.
To have my reputation – and that of my company – maligned as you pursue other reporting targets is unacceptable, and I urge you to publicly retract any inference that I have engaged in illegal or questionable business dealings.
ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel is a 100% African American, privately-owned business enterprise and we have been in business for many years, providing quality services. Our reputation and our business ethics have always been impeccable. ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel is proud to be the incumbent staffing agency for the NCTRCA. The NCTRCA is not an “obscure” agency as you claim in the article. It is a “highly” necessary agency that helps disadvantaged businesses get the certification they need to get access to public contracting opportunities which historically have been denied. Your lack of understanding of the process does not justify labeling the Agency as obscure.
Moreover, we found that there are many discrepancies in your article. It is clear to us and many in the diverse business community that your news article on the subject of certification and its relationship with the business community clearly shows that you do not understand the process or the reason it is important for people of color and women to go through the process. The article also shows a lack of respect for the small, disadvantaged business community, who, by the way, are legitimate taxpayers, employers and consumers. Women and people of color even buy newspapers.
Your statement, “Getting certified gives those vendors a big edge in competing for government contracts worth many millions” is absolutely false. Getting certified as a Disadvantaged Minority Business Enterprise or Woman-owned Business Enterprise (D/M/WBE) only gives vendors access to bid opportunities previously denied them.
Public agencies have made a “conscious” decision to include minority and women owned firms in the bidding process. Without certification these agencies could not identify “real” D/M/WBEs from shams and front companies.
The playing field is not equal; this is why government agencies and corporations have Supplier Diversity Programs and diversity inclusion goals. These goals can range from 1% to 49% for D/M/WBE inclusion; however, they are goals and not quotas/requirements. Therefore, D/M/WBEs have to compete on their own merit.
D/M/WBEs participate in the bidding process the same as non-minority businesses. They are required to meet the same insurance requirements, bonding, experience and expertise as a “non-minority” competitor(s). Contract bids are awarded to the “lowest” responsive bidder in most cases. The difference is that D/M/WBEs are required to show proof of certification as a legitimate diverse supplier.
Also, when D/M/WBEs are awarded a prime government contract, in most cases, the D/M/WBE firm (as is the case with any prime contractor) is expected to meet diversity goals by subcontracting a percentage of the business to other D/M/WBEs.
It is true that ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel uses subcontractors who are certified by the NCTRCA. Most of the local government entities that we pursue for business are investors into this agency for the sole purpose of ensuring that disadvantaged business enterprises are legitimately certified as such in accordance to “Title 49 CFR parts 23 & 26.”
To meet the contractual diversity goals we have subcontracted business to T-BEY & Associates and other NCTRCA diverse suppliers. These instances are simply good business practices.
Again, to be clear, ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel is the staffing arm for the NCTRCA. We are very proud of our long association with this important agency. However, we have no governance or access to NCTRCA member files. Nor do we have meetings with the employees whom we staff regarding any applicant’s information. Our role is simply to staff the organization, payroll our employees, and manage employee benefits.
It is important that you understand that staffing the agency is difficult because it requires us to source employees with highly unique skills. The employees are to be highly analytical, high competency in reading, understanding contracts and legal documents and have knowledge of what legal documentation is required to be a legitimate business owner. The employees are to be proficient in reading; they must be detail oriented and possess the ability to analyze every single document in an applicant’s file — which sometimes can include over a thousand pages. This is a highly stressful job because there are so many applicants for certification and our employees assigned to the NCTRCA understand how important it is to the applicant to quickly get them certified. The employees have to know the laws and legislation around certification and the liabilities associated with this process.
Your statement, “The agency focuses on verifying that companies are owned by a minority or a woman – little else” is simply ludicrous and baseless.
We hire and payroll the Agency Director(s). The Agency Director is responsible for ensuring that the NCTRCA Board of Directors’ processes, policies and procedures are adhered to, which includes certifying D/M/WBEs who meet the legally established criteria under 49CFR.
It is true that ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel is a DBE certified by the NCTRCA and that the certification is approved by employees assigned to the agency. ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel has never been confronted about this issue before. We understand how this can be perceived as a conflict of interest by others, but ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel is held to the same standard as any other certification applicant.
It is also true that ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel is certified by other legitimate certifying bodies as a 100% minority-owned business or historically underutilized business enterprise. In your research we assume that you audited the ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel file and found that all of the financials and other documentation and requirements were in the file.
The disgruntled vendors you mentioned in your article have access to the NCTRCA and they know what is required for certification prior to submitting their application. The NCTRCA has done a good job in providing information on certification criteria on their web site. Most certifying agencies, regardless of whether it’s the State of Texas, the Minority or Women’s Business Councils, require financials and basically the same information for certification. Those vendors who submit incomplete information for certification can cause delays for others who are waiting to be certified.
To be clear, ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel and its employees do not have the “inside track” on bids for upcoming contracts. Our employees assigned to the NCTRCA focus on the certification process only and are not privy to upcoming bid information. It is reasonable to assume that any bid information obtained by our employees assigned to the NCTRCA is made available to all certified vendors in their data base.
By the way, did you check to see the number of other Temporary Agencies in the NCTRCA database? Your reporting seems to infer that ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel is the only certified Temp Agency in the NCTRCA’s database.
ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel goes through the contract bidding process for new business the same as all other bidders. You are certainly aware that government agencies have rules and regulations around the bid process that they must adhere to. ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel has followed these procedures for all the years we have been in business!
Temp agency has inside track:
Without ever establishing a foundation for same, the tone of the story was disparaging to the reputation of ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel.
You wrote:
The News began looking into (NCTRCA) in an attempt to get information about three companies named in a federal corruption case.
ALL TEMPS 1 PERSONNEL IS NOT AMONG THOSE COMPANIES!
You wrote:
NCTRCA is an obscure agency…
You later wrote:
NCTRCA is an important link…
WHICH IS IT?
You NEVER wrote that you understand outsourcing as a management strategy, or that you understand the role staffing agencies play in assisting management achieve human resource cost-savings.
You NEVER demonstrated through your story that you understand the role of certification in the government procurement process. Frequent allusions to contracts being “given” to minority-owned companies illustrate this failure.
You DID write that ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel was paid over $2.7 million – spanning a 12-year period – for staffing NCTRCA, but you FAILED to write that that figure includes salaries, benefits, insurance and costs associated with the contract. The inference is that we earned $2.7 million, which is far; far from the accurate reporting we are to assume went into your long, convoluted story.
In further distortion, you wrote that ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel earned at least $30 million – across a decade – from government contracts with agencies that support NCTRCA. Without stating that government contracts are awarded after a competitive bidding process, you lead readers to believe that ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel is engaged in less than ethical business practices.
You never wrote that ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel has an outstanding record of exemplary performance on every contract that we have won through the competitive bid process.
You never wrote that our employees sourced through the NCTRCA contract with ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel work under the direction of the NCTRCA board and that agency’s policies.
Following that critical omission, you implied that our employees instead took direction from ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel. That is patently false; coupled with the suggestion that ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel employees certified ALL TEMPS 1 Personnel while denying certification to other staffing agencies, the distortion rises to the level of libel.
Again, as stated in my opening comments, you have maligned my reputation – and that of my company – I fully expect a public retraction to the inference that I have engaged in illegal or questionable business dealings.
