posted on December 25, 2006 07:15:02 PM
Fraud, Katrina Contracts Could Waste $2B
Monday, December 25, 2006 7:29 PM EST
The Associated Press
By HOPE YEN
WASHINGTON (AP) — The tally for Hurricane Katrina waste could top $2 billion next year because half of the lucrative government contracts valued at $500,000 or greater for cleanup work are being awarded without little competition.
Federal investigators have already determined the Bush administration squandered $1 billion on fraudulent disaster aid to individuals after the 2005 storm. Now they are shifting their attention to the multimillion dollar contracts to politically connected firms that critics have long said are a prime area for abuse.
In January, investigators will release the first of several audits examining more than $12 billion in Katrina contracts. The charges range from political favoritism to limited opportunities for small and minority-owned firms, which initially got only 1.5 percent of the total work.
"Based on their track record, it wouldn't surprise me if we saw another billion more in waste," said Clark Kent Ervin, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general from 2003-2004. "I don't think sufficient progress has been made."
He called it inexcusable that the Bush administration would still have so many no-bid contracts. Under pressure last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency director David Paulison pledged to rebid many of the agreements, only to backtrack months later and reopen only a portion.
Investigators are now examining whether some of the agreements — which in some cases were extended without warning rather than rebid — are still unfairly benefiting large firms.
"It's a combination of laziness, ineptitude and it may well be nefarious," Ervin said.
posted on December 25, 2006 09:31:55 PM
Yes, Bigpeepa, the bush administration, the fiscally conservative conservatives, just can't get that "accountability" issue !
Democrats could burn truckloads of money in giant bonfires and never catch up to the sloppy, irresponible spend spend spend lose lose lose neocons!
Poor Records Plague Bush AIDS Effort
Updated 9:12 PM ET December 25, 2006
By RITA BEAMISH
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's ambitious AIDS-fighting program in poor countries has pushed so hard for fast results that basic record keeping and accountability often went by the wayside, making it hard to judge the true success, according to government audits and officials.
Investigators found the three-year-old, $15-billion program has overcounted and undercounted thousands patients it helped or was unable to verify claims of success by local groups that took U.S. money to prevent the spread of disease or care for AIDS victims and their children.
The Bush administration says it has worked to fix the problems that were found in multiple countries and outlined in several audits reviewed by The Associated Press.
"It's not good enough for the auditors to hear from the mission that we did A, B and C but we can't prove it to you, or there's no documentation to prove that we did it," said Joe Farinella, a top watchdog inside the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Farinella is the assistant inspector general who oversaw the investigations into how U.S. AIDS money was spent overseas in 2004 and 2005.
He said many recipients failed to keep records that would provide "reasonable assurance that what they say was done was in fact carried out." The inspector general will recommend that the administration clarify its directives and improve reporting methods.
The administration acknowledges the lapses and says it has imposed tighter reporting systems that have improved the accuracy of information. Officials blame the shoddy record keeping on an eagerness to get money into the field to help AIDS victims.
"You could've waited for three years to get all these systems in place and an awful lot of people would have died," said Ambassador Mark Dybul, the administration's global AIDS coordinator""""
