2008 Woodie Awards
Rebuilding the Big Ea$y
Brian Dean
Issue date: 9/28/05 Section: Opinion
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For failing to protect residents from the inevitable, the federal government owes much compensation to New Orleans. A significant portion of the $1.9 billion allocated to the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) for Louisiana during Bush's five years in office was sunk into projects with no relationship to hurricane or flood protection.
For example, in 1998 a $748 million project was implemented to upgrade canal locks under the pretense of accommodating increased canal traffic; in reality, traffic had been decreasing. According to CorpsWatch, a division of Taxpayers for Common Sense devoted to cutting wasteful spending by USACE, traffic on New Orleans' Inner Harbor Navigational Canal had dropped 28 percent since 1988. This kind of waste and misdirection of resources cannot stand if the city is to rebuild efficiently.
If clear reconstruction goals are not established, unknown sums of federal funds will certainly be nabbed by unscrupulous billionaires. Already, investors are buying up damaged property at bargain-basement prices. Do these people really need tax dollars to develop property they've obtained only as a result of this disaster?
To heighten the potential for waste, the US Navy assigned Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) the task of rebuilding naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Despite the fact that Pentagon audits revealed that a staggering $1.4 billion of more than $9 billion paid to Halliburton for work in Iraq was deemed "questionable" or "unsupported," the government still refuses to keep a watchful eye on taxpayer dollars when it comes to contracts that enrich friends of the administration.
On Sept. 8, President Bush issued a proclamation effectively suspending the Davis-Bacon Act in areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. The Depression-era law mandates that workers on federal construction projects be paid no less than the prevailing local wage. Bush defended his actions by stating Davis-Bacon increases construction costs, presumably because he cares about keeping spending under control. But since the local construction wage for New Orleans is approximately $9 per hour, surely there must be a more effective way to keep costs down. Perhaps competitive bidding between companies without direct connections to Bush or any of his appointees can shave more than a few dollars off the bottom line.
For example, in 1998 a $748 million project was implemented to upgrade canal locks under the pretense of accommodating increased canal traffic; in reality, traffic had been decreasing. According to CorpsWatch, a division of Taxpayers for Common Sense devoted to cutting wasteful spending by USACE, traffic on New Orleans' Inner Harbor Navigational Canal had dropped 28 percent since 1988. This kind of waste and misdirection of resources cannot stand if the city is to rebuild efficiently.
If clear reconstruction goals are not established, unknown sums of federal funds will certainly be nabbed by unscrupulous billionaires. Already, investors are buying up damaged property at bargain-basement prices. Do these people really need tax dollars to develop property they've obtained only as a result of this disaster?
To heighten the potential for waste, the US Navy assigned Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) the task of rebuilding naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Despite the fact that Pentagon audits revealed that a staggering $1.4 billion of more than $9 billion paid to Halliburton for work in Iraq was deemed "questionable" or "unsupported," the government still refuses to keep a watchful eye on taxpayer dollars when it comes to contracts that enrich friends of the administration.
On Sept. 8, President Bush issued a proclamation effectively suspending the Davis-Bacon Act in areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. The Depression-era law mandates that workers on federal construction projects be paid no less than the prevailing local wage. Bush defended his actions by stating Davis-Bacon increases construction costs, presumably because he cares about keeping spending under control. But since the local construction wage for New Orleans is approximately $9 per hour, surely there must be a more effective way to keep costs down. Perhaps competitive bidding between companies without direct connections to Bush or any of his appointees can shave more than a few dollars off the bottom line.
