Posted on 08/05/2014 9:54:06 AM PDT by george76
Hurricane Sandy victims were improperly denied grant money to rebuild. Criminals escaped from halfway houses and committed murder and assault. Case managers for people with developmental disabilities failed to file accurate reports about their visits with clients. Those were some of the findings of a recent Rutgers University study, which concluded that for years, New Jersey officials did a poor job overseeing state contracts with outside firms.
The review, which examined how New Jersey procured and monitored contracts, determined that oversight failures not only wasted taxpayers’ money but put some of its most vulnerable residents at risk.
...
shocked by how little oversight was happening in real time, as opposed to after the fact.
Many states have struggled to adequately oversee billions of dollars in contracts with companies — both for-profit and not-for-profit. Too often, states rush to tighten contracting laws or regulations only after a public controversy erupts or they’ve been slammed by auditors. By that time, millions of dollars may have been wasted... While officials don’t keep track of how much contracts cost state governments nationwide, it’s estimated to be at least in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
State auditors often find that contractors initially bid low to win the business, but later submit “change orders” resulting in higher costs, saying the scope of the project changed.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefiscaltimes.com ...
Somehow, studies like this never seem to be done when a Democrat governor is in power. Which - in New Jersey - is most of the time.
The sad part is that some Lib or good government type will say something like “if we just add some more controls and oversight, we can get rid of this type of waste and corruption.” BS. What they will never understand is that any time you have a huge pile of government money to hand out, you will always have waste and corruption.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.