Their referred to as the Body Snatchers they haul bodies for City of Chicago Police Department. Their now incorporated with deals and raking in big bucks soon to grow even bigger. A City of Chicago typical over paid mismanaged contract, little over-site and a lot of City clueless ignorance. This City never learns!
Prior to the arrival of GSSP, body-hauling duties in Chicago were the responsibility of police. They hated the task.The Federation of Police had long pressed to privatize body hauling, and an independent arbitrator finally ordered that be done a few years ago as part of contract negotiations between the city and the police union.Lax regulations City regulators have been accommodating to GSSP, which last year hired the law firm of influential developer Peter Bynoe to represent it on legal and lobbying matters with the city. Bynoe, a onetime Daley appointee to the Chicago Plan Commission, made a pitch on Higgins' behalf to Yerkes' boss, Chief Procurement Officer Barbara Lumpkin, when GSSP was bidding for its new deal last year.Payment vouchers show the company routinely overbilled the city by hundreds of dollars each month. The only consequence was that a city comptroller's office employee had to adjust the math downward repeatedly before cutting checks, city records show.
City officials also told GSSP it didn't have to operate as many vehicles or maintain as big a staff as the contract called for. Police had overestimated the number of bodies the firm would be called upon to transport, meaning GSSP's revenues would fall short of expectations.The city didn't stop there. Officials let GSSP out of the deal only one year into a three-year contract. It was put out for bid again with new specifications, and GSSP was free to seek higher compensation.It did, and won the bidding over other competitors.Under the new deal, which went into effect late summer, GSSP is now paid $915 a body. But the contract contains an escalator clause. By 2008, the price can rise to $960. It can go up again the following year to $1,008. And by 2010, GSSP can bill the city $1,059 every time it moves a body to the morgue.