$20 Million for Art? Pfft. Merely Peanuts.
I suppose everyone’s heard the recent news about the VA spending $20M on art. Well, as far as VA “management excellence” goes, it turns out that’s peanuts.
During the period 2010-2013, the VA began implementation of 15 solar energy projects. They were projected to take on average of 7 to 12 months, and to all be completed by now.
I suppose you can guess what’s coming. And if you guessed “another sterling example of the VA’s excellence in managing the use of its resources” – you’d be right. (I trust the sarcasm in the previous sentence is obvious.)
Instead, the projects are taking an average of 42 months to completion. Further, most aren’t yet fully operational.
In aggregate, the projects were projected to cost $95M. So far, the VA has spent approximately $408M – which is “only” 329+% over budget. And some of the projects haven’t even begun to produce electricity, let alone reach full operating capacity. In fact, of the 15 projects investigated by the VA OIG only two were operating at design capacity by March of this year.
The Washington Free Beacon has a good article giving more details. It’s worth a read. So is the VA OIG report on the subject (PDF format). Be forewarned: both just might p!ss you off.
“Saving the environment”? Yeah, right. IMO “political payback using tax dollars” sounds more like it.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Global Warming, Government Incompetence, Veterans' Affairs Department
I work in manufacturing – when we quote a project, if the customer sets the specs for the project and changes them to something more expensive, the customer pays the difference. When we set the specs on the project and we make an error, guess who sucks it up? My mind is constantly boggled by government project spending – if someone bids a full project and fails to meet their obligations, “shucks, it’s just play money – go ahead” is NOT the correct response. There is a reason why deadlines and cost estimations are so critical, but apparently not if the purchaser is the government. If my team bids a job and it costs 50% more than we quoted, we get fired, either by the customer or by the company. The lack of accountability at all layers of government procurement that just amazes me.
How many veteran appointments would that 20 mil cover???
There are clearly some fuck ups in the VA, and this goes right along with some of the stupid decision making at the highest level over there.
That said, my guess is that this was probably a different color of money. The government budget process is incredibly and needlessly complex due to federal law, and each agency has money from a variety of sources, all ultimately dictated by federal law in the form of the Federal Budget. There are things you must do and things you must not do. Usually it is a result of an unholy Congressional compromise. A great example is Sequestration:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/senate-bill/365/text
Read the NDAA or federal budget for any given year and try to understand it all.
My guess is that there was either a legal mandate to buy art and make facilities ‘green’ or an incentive program that gave agencies ‘free money’ under some other budget line that had nothing to do with the VA.
As far as holding contractors accountable, there is an absolutely byzantine labyrinth of regulations about governemnt building projects. Look at the military acquisitions process as an example (for fun, google the ‘acquisitions horse blanket’, AKA the integrated acquisition,technology, and logistics lifecycle management system). If you want a Program Manager to slit his wrists just tell him that his program is going back to Milestone A because of a procedural error.
BTW, If you want one of these projects (whether or not you can actually do the work), license a business in Nevada as a woman/disabled veteran/native American owned small business, and you will be at the front of the line for getting bids. Once you get the award, find a big company that can actually do the job to buy you out.
Elaine Ricci! Come on down!!!
Dat’s a good one.
Reminds me of when they announced the BRAC of Ft Monmouth ( to SAVE money) and went ahead and spent millions completing the geothermal system anyways that has sat unused for the last several years since the base was shuttered.
I didn’t know they closed my old Alma Mater? I did 12 months there in the early 70’s for MOS31S30, that is some prime real estate, very close to Asbury Park! It was a nice place!!
They had to build it because it was already paid for. Same thing happened in Karlsuhe GE in 1995. Built a new state of the art dental clinic just in time to turn the entire kaserne back over to Germany.
Ah, “green” power.
Making my retirement that much more secure and coming that much sooner.
Thanks, idiots.
In 4 years, the component costs probably fell more than 50%
“329+% over budget”
Right on track cocksuckers….
Art, solar panels, bonuses, way to look out for our Veterans.
Dickheads.
Art for art’s sake, money for God’s sake –
Someone in VA mismanagement doesn’t have a clue what their job really is.
Oh, they do. They just don’t care. It’s not like they’ll go out of business or anything.
That and the Tricare surplus being stolen to fund windmills likely being built by a fatcat donor to B. Hussein 0bama & Company.
Damn, I’m sorry I missed that bidding opportunity. I never realized the VA was so effective at managing projects that a 300% over-run would be an acceptable outcome, especially when you don’t actually need to produce a viable outcome after taking the money.
What gets me is the concerted group effort required to be that fucking willfully ignorant and wasteful by and entire GROUP of people. I contracted just enough to see multitudes of “Contract managers”, and “Contract administrators”, and “Auditors”, and etc. There is always an obese administrative chain of command full of drones that put little check marks in little check boxes and carry around clipboards and collect per diem and drink at the hotel bar while racking up their Hertz reward points. They’re all too busy gaming the system to their own advantage (with a weather eye on their retirement benefits at all times) to actually give a fuck about “managing”, “administrating”, or “auditing” the thing that goes over budget by 300%. And the beat goes on.
I am still waiting on my question from years ago. The Federal Government shoveled somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000,000 to Solyndra, then they went tits up. Did they ever produce and or sell one solar panel anywhere?
Apparently Henry’s Solar Sales has a few on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/henryssolarsales.org/posts/579682142122206
And of course eBay has some too:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Solyndra-Flat-Roof-Solar-System-250-kW-4-20-watt-/160553 849228
But wait, there is more! Let’s not forget about A123 Systems, I mean Wanxiang, I mean B456.
Evergreen Solar ($25 million)
SpectraWatt ($500,000)
Solyndra ($535 million)
Beacon Power ($43 million)
Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
SunPower ($1.2 billion)
First Solar ($1.46 billion)
Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)
Amonix ($5.9 million)
Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
Abound Solar ($400 million)
A123 Systems ($279 million)
Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)
Johnson Controls ($299 million)
Schneider Electric ($86 million)
Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
ECOtality ($126.2 million)
Raser Technologies ($33 million)
Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)
Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)
Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)
Range Fuels ($80 million)
Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)
Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)
Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)
GreenVolts ($500,000)
Vestas ($50 million)
LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
Nordic Windpower ($16 million)
Navistar ($39 million)
Satcon ($3 million)
Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)
Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)
Fuck it, we gots the $ to burn, but what about the Children?
As ex-OS2 mentions, apparently they did, and just in case you have a spare $3900 burning a hole in your pocket, you can buy one today on eBay.
There was an analysis of the Solyndra failure a few years ago which said that although there was indeed a lot of financial flim flam that went on, the most critical failure was one of technology. A key element in the Solyndra business plan was that in order to make a profit, manufacturing needed to scale by using robotics in the production process. Unfortunately, the company was dependent on a single European vendor for a critical part of the automation and it failed badly.
My own view is that the Solyndra failure and the price-point problem is related to the fact that the Chinese have made no secret about wanting to control the PV panel market. And they will likely put below-cost panels on the American market in order to get there. Remember the Taiwanese doing IC chip dumping back in the day? We did the R&D, Taiwan reaped the benefit.
It’s the fucking VA folks. This shouldn’t come as any surprise.
Nothing… and I mean NOTHING the government is involved in is worth a damn. This is par for the course
Still, it’s infuriating- but it sure won’t get any better.
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