GAO review of 13 large Katrina contracts finds waste, high prices, and poor management control at FEMA

My Way News:
"Some of the firms, including Gulf Stream Coach and Bechtel, have close ties to the Bush administration or have contributed significantly to the GOP."

Of course there was poor oversight, waste and high prices. It was an emergency - the E in FEMA stands for emergency.

There is a limited amount of foreknowlege possible in these situations. Normal contracting procedures are based on a plan and a budget and mean weeks of preparation of RFPs or IFBs by operational personnel, contract management specialists, accountants and attorneys. Then there is an announcement in the Federal Register with a submission deadline date a month or so later. Well, none of that can be done in the middle of a disaster.

Or, you may have requirements contracts in place in advance where the government doesn't guarantee to buy anything but the contractor agrees in advance to a schedule of available quantities, delivery dates (stated in terms of time from notice to proceed), shipping arrangements, prices and payment terms.

Even if all possible commodity and service need categorirs are covered in advance by requirements contracts, how much to you plan to buy? The average year's requirements? Twice that amount? Probably somewhere in between - and then you still get caught short once in a while.

And another thing - the more you buy of whatever it is you draw up requirements contracts for, you run into the problem that at some level of purchases the system would begin to break down because suppliers bump up against each other in competing for personnel, materials, transport services, etc.

This is not the place for a full course in government contracting and I am not the guy to give it. I did some contract related work at the Office of Economic Opportunity in the Nixon administration and worked briefly in the Defense Contract Administration Service and picked up bits and pieces through the media and some personal contacts over the years. But, I don't pretend to be an expert on all the arcana of this field.

And the FEMA contracting rules have their own vagaries. For example, in one county training session, we local government emergency managers were warned not to set up shelters for displaced residents or else the governments we represent would be stuck with the bill. But, if we went through channels, the Red Cross would set up shelters in schools with which they had standing contracts and the bill would go to higher authorities.

Also, as you read this and other stories on this, keep in mind that relatively few firms exist which can big on the biggest or most specialized contracts and that even the opportunities available to small companies sometimes go begging because dealing with the Federal government is perceived, correctly, as more trouble than it is worth.

What I want to make clear is that these things are always going to be a bit messy. And, that a lot of the criticism coming from the Hill is entirely partisan and bears no relation to any actual corruption. All that is necessary is to create the impression of corrunption - sort of like the way the government prosecuted Martha Stewart.