So today's McPaper, USA TODAY, reported on the lack of push to spend nearly $4Billion dollars of US Taxpayer's money to fix public works destroyed by the Gulf Coast Hurricanes. It was front page news and the entire column was skewed to show the side of the local officials rant that FEMA "regularly underestimates the cost of repairs..."
I'm in the Acquisitions cadre and what we do is write contracts. The rest of the story is summed up in the last paragraph...just saying! :-D
1 comment:
FEMA Flygurl:
I think I see the problem here. The locals want to wring out whatever money they can from the federal government to help pay for the public works in their state. And I'm not surprised that they want as much money as they can get from the feds. Not only have the Gulf Coast states been devastated by Katrina, but the states are also deeply suffering from the economic recession that has slammed this country. This FEMA money has become another means for an economic stimulus for the locals. Of course the FEMA folks, such as yourself, are working under strict instructions on how to write up these contracts, how much money goes into what projects, what "t's" are crossed, and what "i's" are dotted. Those are the restrictions on how the money is spent on the public works projects. So yes, we have a bottleneck here between the locals and FEMA on how much money is spent on what projects, leaving the $3.9 billion sitting in the bank, unspent. I'm not blaming FEMA, or even the locals, on the bickering over these "roadblocks."
What I really see here is a devastated area, both by Katrina, and the economic recession, where people have been pleading for government help to restore their public infrastructure. There was the incompetence, and mismanagement that took place in FEMA under the Bush cronies, on such a scale that I do not think FEMA has yet to recovered from. The locals have been demanding for FEMA relief from Katrina for around three years--they do not care who is in the Oval Office, or who the current FEMA head is now. They want their disaster relief now! FEMA has been taken over by the adults in the Obama administration and is only now starting to look at how to make improvements in the disaster-relief agency. FEMA is now getting the ball rolling on signing out the government contracts to fix the public works projects. In reality, this has been an ongoing problem for both the locals, and FEMA, even since Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast.
The economic stimulus bill has finally passed the Senate by a vote of 61-37. Let us hope that, within the next year, both FEMA money and the economic stimulus money will help bring a recovery of the Gulf Coast states. Until then, you've got a lot of contracts to approve! ;)
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