More For Bureaucrats, Less For Bricks And Mortar

Echoing other officials who have quietly announced the diversion of stimulus cash originally intended to fund construction of public facilities, GAO Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro testified Thursday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that states which will be spending the bulk of the appropriations for infrastructure will not be able to adequately monitor the expenditures. Vice President Biden has written to Chairman Joseph Lieberman and Ranking Member Susan Collins of that committee promising that OMB sill propose new guidance permitting states to shift funding away from bricks and mortar to state auditor offices for the hiring of more bureaucrats to count the beans. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Edolphus Towns has also announced his intent to put a bill in the hopper redirecting funds from construction to state auditors.

Stimulus Transparency To Cost Money And Time

OMB's RAT Board Chairman Earl Devaney announced last Thursday that the transparency respecting expenditure of stimulus legislation funds on the Recovery.gov website will require most of his $84 million oversight budget, and over a year to develop. Federal and state agencies can't agree on how much detail should be included in reports on construction projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

I have an idea that won't require creation of a single additional piece of paper. How about assigning a unique identifying number to each individual project funded in whole or in part by these appropriations. Create a database attaching the identifier with the brief project description already included in the front end of every government construction contract. Then, link the identifier to .pdf copies of the contractor's sworn statement and lien waivers already submitted with each monthly pay request on every government construction job.

This way, citizens interested in the progress and efficiency of any particular project could quickly drill down to a complete list of every business that was paid any money for labor or materials on the project. Furthermore, neither the bureaucrats nor the contractors on the project would have to write up a single document they are not already required to prepare. As far as I can tell all this information is already required to be public under the freedom of information laws in every state anyway, so no one's toes get stepped on, and no one has to do any extra work. Just run the sworn statements and lien waivers through a scanner every month and e-mail them to Devaney's folks in Washington, D.C. for electronic insertion into the database. Nobody even has to spend money on stamps. Mission accomplished.

Expenditure Controls Could Bottleneck Stimulus Funds

Highlighting the capacity bottlenecks which could thwart speedy outflow of the economic stimulus funds, OMB deputy Robert Nabors testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Thursday that an additional 150 auditors will be needed to make sure fraud and waste are kept out of these projects. GAO acting director Gene Dodaro says they will not be fully staffed for the job until September. Meanwhile, responding to President Obama's memo making fixed price contracting the new standard for the federal government, the House Armed Services Committee created a bipartisan seven member panel to review defense contracting procedures.

OMB Issues Recovery Contracting Guidance

Wednesday, February 18, Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, issued a 60 page memorandum of guidance to all federal agencies responsible for awarding contracts, loans and grants under the stimulus legislation signed earlier this week. The memo contains many details about various government accounting processes and procedures, and how they will have to be augmented to provide the public with information regarding where all of the billions of dollars get spent.

Nevertheless, buried in the morass of detail is some key information important to construction businesses regarding where to look for projects to bid on, grants to apply for and loans which will be made available under the dozens of new and ongoing programs which will get the $149.8 billion appropriated specifically for construction by federal government agencies.

Before contracts are let for bid by federal agencies, the information about the bids will be posted here:

http://FedBizOpps.gov

Grants available under the federal programs will be listed here:

http://grants.gov/

Finally, available federal loan programs for construction projects will be listed here:

http://govloans.gov/

Your state government, and many large city government agencies will have comparable web sites up and running soon, if they do not have them already, listing the same sort of information about contracts, loans and grants in your local area. Good luck, and good hunting!