Compliance Review Office New System Saves Time and Money
Published on May 23, 2022
Jackson County’s Compliance Review Office fulfills a vital yet mostly under-appreciated role in making sure county tax dollars are responsibly allocated in ways that benefit the entire community. Additionally, their mission helps ensure that workers on county projects are compensated at prevailing wage standards.
Any entity that wants to do business with Jackson County is asked to qualify for a Certificate of Compliance. The requirements for the Certificate are that the organization must not owe back taxes, and it must agree with the County’s equal employment opportunity policy.
The Compliance Review Office also monitors prevailing wage standards for every labor position employed by County contractors, as required by Missouri state law. The final core duty of the office is to set goals where appropriate for minority-owned (MBE) and women-owned (WBE) companies to compete for Jackson County business opportunities.
“We’re ensuring that workers get paid the right wage,” says Jaime Guillen, Chief Compliance Review Officer for Jackson County. “When we set goals, there are a lot of small businesses that really aren’t big enough to bid on their own, so they’ll partner up or look for a subcontractor role. By doing the work that we do, we’re ensuring that small businesses have an opportunity to contract with the County. That helps local workers and keeps tax dollars in our local economy.”
To date, the Compliance Review Office has identified over $54,000 in restitution for workers on County projects.
The office also helps companies large and small to come into compliance by working with the Assessment and Collections departments to determine what tax obligations are owed by previously un-assessed businesses and making sure that all businesses are operating by the same set of rules. Due to this process, over $1.9 million in outstanding Jackson County taxes have been collected.
Recently, the Compliance Review Office has been able to streamline their tasks by utilizing technology widely used by other public and private organizations. B2Gnow allows the office to seamlessly integrate information from contractors and subcontractors into an online system that tracks goals assigned by Jackson County when awarding contracts. This saves the small staff hours of data-entry work as well as providing a standardized interface that businesses are increasingly familiar with.
The system keeps track of who is getting paid and when, which also saves time and minimizes error when communicating between contractors and County staff. The Compliance Review Office and contractors can see at a glance whether the goals requested by the County are being met. The service also helps the office reach out to industries and organizations the County is interested in receiving bids from. In most instances, the County strives to identify at least three possible vendors or businesses per opportunity, to preserve competition and make the most of available funding.
Another tool of the trade, LCPtracker will soon be used to compare weekly payrolls reported by contractors to the state and local prevailing wage standards, automatically alerting the County if there are any issues. Katie Bartle, Chief Deputy Auditor-Compliance noted that the upgrades will benefit Jackson County businesses as well as the County itself. “This all came out of an initiative to increase vendor participation, both getting more bids and having higher contracted values with MBE/WBE businesses. So with the databases that come with B2Gnow, we’re really hoping to increase our visibility to those businesses, and make it more attractive for them to bid on our projects.”