PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The Chafee administration has inked a new multimillion-dollar contract for the hiring of hundreds of "contract employees."
The new three-year contract went to Adil Business Systems, the company that has had a temporary staffing contract with state government in Rhode Island since 2007. The estimated cost of the new contract: $9.1 million a year, a potential $27.3 million over three years.
Based in New York City, Adil currently has 284 contract workers in Rhode Island state government, including dentists and dieticians at the state prison, LPNs at the state hospital and a "law enforcement highway-safety coordinator" in the state's Department of Public Safety.
The upside: state taxpayers are not obligated to pay them benefits. The downside: some of these "temps" have been working for the state for five years or more, without benefits, in jobs that are not publicly advertised by the state.