3-year computer project set to be shelved

By Adam Wilson | The Olympian • Published March 13, 2008

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A computer project of the Health Care Authority, which runs state workers' health insurance plans, likely will end after $7 million in taxpayer money has been spent developing it, and budget writers plan to take about $260 million from the agency.

That cost will rise before the authority's BAIAS project, as it is known, can be relegated to history.

And legislators will reduce the state contribution to health care for all state employees by 23 percent, from $732 per employee, per month, to $561.

That rate is too low to cover costs and will force the Health Care Authority to burn through a $240 million surplus by June of next year, officials with the authority say.

The surplus was a big help to lawmakers crafting a one-year budget that will spend an extra $306 million while leaving $835 million in the bank for next year.

"To our surprise and delight, we learned that the health costs are not rising quite as fast as expected. … That's welcome news, of course," said Rep. Helen Sommers, the lead House budget writer.

But for the Health Care Authority, the proposal means a future deficit and ending a computer project that it has been working on since 2005.

That's when the BAIAS project was launched, with $5 million in funding. An additional $25 million was set aside in the most recent two-year budget, of which about $2 million has been spent.

But the budget Democrats unveiled Wednesday takes back $14 million "to reflect discontinuation" of the project, according to the detailed summary of the bill.

"Essentially, what they're doing is providing us with funding so we can cover all of our wind-down costs or our shutdown costs," said Megan Atkinson, financial and contracts at the Health Care Authority.

Like many state managers, she learned the details of the budget when it was released to the public Wednesday, after Democratic leaders introduced it.

Sommers said after the budget news conference that the proposal did not significantly change state technology projects.