QUESTION
How is the RFP process for legal services being addressed amid critiques, and what are the efforts to resolve funding disparities between nonprofit and profit providers?
1:55:42
·
6 min
Officials explain that the Request for Proposals (RFP) process for legal services is still under development, with community feedback shaping the final document, and efforts are underway to address funding disparities between nonprofit and for-profit providers.
- The RFP process is currently in the drafting stage, and specific details cannot be disclosed yet.
- Feedback from concept papers is being used to refine the RFP and ensure it meets community and legal service providers' needs.
- A focus is on transitioning from profit-driven to nonprofit organizations, with an emphasis on building the professional capacity of the legal field over time.
- There's a movement to address disparities in pay between for-profit and nonprofit legal service providers, especially in emergency response scenarios.
- The administration is actively seeking long-term strategies to better support nonprofit organizations and make the field more responsive.
Alexa Avilés
1:55:42
In terms of what we've heard from nonprofit legal service providers, is that the RFP that the administration is putting out have unrealistic deliverables for the amount of funding available.
1:55:59
And many attorneys are not applying for that.
1:56:02
What is your response to that?
1:56:04
Because I'm sure you have heard it directly as well.
Molly Schaeffer
1:56:07
So we don't it's not that r r f r f RFP, that has to do with Moi's RFP.
Manuel Castro
1:56:15
Yeah.
1:56:15
If I can respond,
Alexa Avilés
1:56:16
we can't
Manuel Castro
1:56:17
we can't mhmm speak to what will be in the RFP because that process hasn't been completed.
1:56:24
But I can hand it over to Tom to speak generally about our approach to this work.
Alexa Avilés
1:56:32
Or or how or how have has Moyer responded to this critique of deliverables that do not make sense and and a lack of funding.
Manuel Castro
1:56:43
Well, before I hand it over to Tom, you know, there there's a distinction between the cons of paper that was published in the eventual RFP.
1:56:52
We wanted to gather comments based on the concept paper.
1:56:56
So again, you know, we'll take we're taking those comments into consideration.
1:57:01
It was important for us to follow the guidelines provided by DSS.
1:57:06
To receive feedback from the public, but I'll hand it over to Tom.
Tom Tortorici
1:57:11
Thanks, commissioner.
1:57:12
Thanks, Chair.
1:57:13
Just to repeat, we issued a concept paper with the intention of drawing out community, nonprofit, potential vendor feedback.
1:57:26
We've received a great deal of that.
1:57:28
We're currently developing the first draft of the RFP as the commissioner mentioned, the concept paper isn't necessarily what will be in the RFP.
1:57:39
But we can't speak to the process or to what the eventual deliverables are structured of that program will be.
Alexa Avilés
1:57:49
I know we're in this weird moment of some things we can and fully discuss, but we we've been informed that it looks like hourly rates that are posted for for profit providers are significantly higher than what they're offering nonprofit providers.
1:58:10
What's up with that?
Tom Tortorici
1:58:13
I would defer to Molly regarding the help center.
Molly Schaeffer
1:58:18
So on call council, which is the temp lawyer firm, which we're which we used to sort to staff, the asylum seeker help clinic, we, at the time, wanted to make sure that we could get as many people onboarded as quick as possible.
1:58:35
We did an effort to save costs and lower some lower some of those salaries.
1:58:43
Couple months ago, and we're, again, constantly looking at how to do this better and different.
1:58:48
Again, we wanted to set some we had we We had a mandate, which was our collective mandate to get as many people this kind of support as quickly as possible.
1:58:58
And so we, at the time, tried to source it so that we could get as many lawyers as quickly as possible.
Tom Tortorici
1:59:06
And just to build on that, I think what you're seeing is you know, in in order to respond in an emergency when professional capacity in a field is limited, oftentimes, it will require higher pay or premium of sorts.
1:59:22
Moia Moia's purview is building the capacity of the field over time.
1:59:27
And ensuring that small community based organizations are appropriately resourced and those community based organizations that don't necessarily have or offer legal services.
1:59:36
Are able to build them over time.
1:59:38
So it's building the professional capacity of the field longer term.
Alexa Avilés
1:59:43
Yeah.
1:59:43
But I gotta say, that that's completely disregarding a good number of institutions with very deep expertise in the city of providing legal services over a very long period of time.
1:59:55
And some would argue a more effective political representation for these cases certainly culturally competent.
2:00:04
So having I understand the need to scale up very quickly.
2:00:09
But this consistent message that this administration sends, that it would pay double to corporations and corporate entities and private entities and continue to do value.
2:00:21
Its nonprofit counterparts who are here good, bad, and ugly is the message that we seem to be receiving with these consistent disparities and how contracts are awarded and the values we're seeing this over and over again.
2:00:38
Obviously not not simply Emoya, but in this entire space, we are seeing a prioritization of corporations and profit for corporations and not our nonprofit competent partners who have been here.
2:00:54
And I agree that there is work to be done in terms of building capacity of smaller providers, but we have an incredible network here with very rich and deep expertise who's being nickeled in dimes.
2:01:09
While we're paying private attorneys much more money.
Molly Schaeffer
2:01:13
Can I just actually, just one point on that?
2:01:15
This is a it's a temp firm that hires the lawyers on our behalf.
2:01:20
So a lot of the folks that we have in our sites are nonprofit lawyers.
2:01:24
They work for nonprofits, and they work for us.
2:01:27
It's a lot of it's about the individual.
2:01:29
It's not necessarily about the company.
2:01:31
I hear your point though, which is a point well taken and is something that we are As we look to a long term strategy for this, we are actively looking on how to make the field more able to respond in this way.