Ohio company gets raise to haul bodies

An ex-employee told the paper he sometimes transported five or six bodies in one van.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Mixed-up bodies, overbilling and contract violations have plagued the city of Chicago since a private company based in Ohio took over the job of transporting corpses to the morgue, according to a newspaper report.
Despite the problems, the city's procurement office recently awarded the company, GSSP Enterprises Inc. of Dayton, Ohio, a new five-year, 15.5 million contract -- and a raise. The Chicago Tribune reported in its Sunday editions that instead of paying 210 for each body transported to the Cook County medical examiner's office, the city will pay GSSP 915 per body.
GSSP owner Brian Higgins, 35, said his company does a good job for a fair price. The Chicago Police Department previously handled the job of delivering bodies to the morgue.
"GSSP and myself have provided the city with exceptional service -- and I emphasize exceptional, uninterrupted service -- for the past 2 1/2 years," Higgins told the Tribune.
Former GSSP employee Herschel Walker told the Tribune that a shortage of staff and equipment forced him to haul five or six bodies in a single van, although the most the city allowed was two.
"There was times where me, myself, I had five and six in one van," said Walker, 24, who now works at a West Side funeral home. "Sometimes we even had seven."
Higgins denied Walker's claims, saying it would have been impossible to carry that many corpses in a van.
Serious mix-up
A body mix-up occurred less than a year after Chicago hired GSSP in 2004. The bodies of two women who died of natural causes in separate homes were moved in the same van by GSSP workers. The identities were switched and the mistake wasn't discovered until one family buried the wrong body.
The families filed lawsuits against GSSP that were settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
A Chicago Procurement Department audit recently found GSSP out of compliance with its minority subcontracting commitments. Auditors found GSSP hadn't paid five of the seven minority subcontractors it had promised to hire.
The company's payments to minority subcontractors should have been at least 147,700 by mid-2005, the audit found. Instead, it had been only 10,832.
The company routinely overbilled the city by hundreds of dollars a month, the newspaper reported. The city comptroller's office had to refigure the bills repeatedly, city records show.
The new per-body transport rate far surpasses rates paid elsewhere, the Tribune reported. The Cook County Sheriff's Police pay 130 per body to another company.
"What they pay them in Chicago, that's just ridiculous," said Bob Keller, director of the coroner's office in Lucas County, Ohio. GSSP once moved bodies in Lucas County, which includes Toledo, receiving 85 per corpse transported.
Keller said GSSP was habitually late for pickups and arrived in "shabby" vehicles. Lucas County discontinued its relationship with the firm in 2004 at the end of a two-year contract.
Both Chicago's procurement and police departments oversee GSSP's contract. Police spokeswoman Monique Bond said police are looking closer at GSSP's performance because of unspecified past "discrepancies." She called GSSP a "good vendor" that provides "affordable" service.
Douglas Yerkes, a top deputy in the city's procurement agency, said the department had logged no complaints about GSSP. Yerkes said the city may be paying higher fees because it may be requiring GSSP to commit more staff and equipment for the service than do other cities.