Posted on 10/08/2005 10:38:56 AM PDT by Kaslin
Paul Mullinaux will deposit the $20,000 check he received from the federal government. But he just doesn't feel right about it.
Not after hauling ice in a zigzag motion for two weeks, from New York to Missouri to Alabama to Massachusetts. Not after living for more than a week on the Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base flight line. And not after learning how much the federal government paid for what's been deemed Hurricane Katrina's frozen water fiasco.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded an emergency ice contract with IAP Worldwide Services of Cape Canaveral, Fla., paying more for truckers to sit and wait than most prosecutors make trying capital murder cases.
Under the contract, the Federal Emergency Management Agency paid $54 an hour for each truckload of ice awaiting shipping orders to hurricane-damaged areas, according to the contract with IAP posted on the Corps Galveston (Texas) District Web site.
Beyond that, they paid .28 cents a pound for ice, almost three times the going rate, according to Jeff St. Cin, president of the Ozark-based ice company Gulf Ice. They also paid $2.60 a mile for the roughly 4,000 truckers to haul more than 200 million pounds of ice to emergency staging areas all over the country.
But much of the ice never reached the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast because the city of New Orleans had been evacuated.
"I don't know how they get away with it. I don't know how FEMA gets away with it. I don't know how the Army Corps of Engineers gets away with it," Mullinaux said. "I'm going to take their check for $20,000, but I'm ashamed to do it. I'll never do it again. It's more important for me to protect my customers than to haul ice all over the United States for nobody."
FEMA spokesman Don North disagrees with that logic. He said it's better to be prepared for the worst and have goods available, than to order less. He said the agency shouldn't be criticized for being overprepared. And, he said, had New Orleans not been evacuated, the ice would have been used.
FEMA and Corps of Engineer officials also said the ice was expensive because the contract requires delivery of 100 truckloads within a moment's notice.
Even so, some say the government got a raw deal on the contract. IAP was the only company to bid the ice proposal in 2003, and the Corps has opted to renew the contract each year since. Next year, the Corps will have to go out for bids again.
One problem is that the federal procurement process is too stringent, prompting many businesses to shy away from government work, said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a government watchdog group.
"The procurement system at the federal level is a mess. I remember 15-page specifications for chocolate chip cookies at the Pentagon. The overhead just to comply with the red tape is a (great) expense, and you charge that back to the federal government," he said.
But AIP's bid was viable, and the proposal had been advertised nationwide, said Marilyn Uhrich, a spokeswoman for the Corps' Galveston (Texas) District. Several companies downloaded the proposal, but in the end only AIP bid the contract, she said.
"For a company to accept the job of providing ice is to take on a tremendous responsibility," she said. "They must be able to react to multiple disasters which might occur at the same time, as we have seen this year."
Schatz, who noted the government waste from Hurricane Katrina and Rita would grow into the billions of dollars, said he was more concerned with poor planning than a pricey contract.
"They should just have a deal with Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Home Depot and other large companies to get all this stuff out there as quickly as possible and that would solve a lot of problems," he said.
It's hard, he said, to pin down an appropriate price for goods in emergency circumstances, especially given the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina's damage.
However, he admitted the contract "should probably be rebid."
Even so, $54 an hour per truckload, once completely calculated, will add up to a substantial sum for the hundreds of truckers who waited days and in some cases more than a week at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base for orders to deliver. Of those, 114 truckloads of ice were sent from Maxwell to a storage facility in Gloucester, Mass., Corps officials said. That cost approximately $385,000 in mileage alone.
It also cost FEMA any future contracts with Mullinaux, who said he's done working for the federal government. Since he contracted directly with FEMA, he said, he was paid $2.25 a mile and $600 a day instead of $54 an hour the government paid IAP per truckload.
While at Maxwell, he said FEMA attempted to send him to Idaho, but he "flat refused."
"I said what kind of hurricanes are in Idaho?" he said. "The only reason I brought the ice to (Massachusetts) was to get rid of it. I couldn't stand it anymore. I spent a lot time trying to help somebody, and I helped nobody."
No offense to the poster, but this is recycled news. It's GW's fault.
Regards!
Jen
It's called contingency waste.
By definition, massive amounts of money gets spent on preparing to deal with problems that never actually develop.
For instance, is all the money paid to fire fighters to sit around waiting for the next fire "wasted?"
Was all the money we spent on the military during the Cold War "wasted" because we never used (most of )their weaponry?
If you insist on being prepared for the worst, you will be greatly over-prepared if anything less than the worst happens. Then you are accused of waste.
OTOH, if this ice had been needed and the government had not been able to deliver it, the author of this hit piece would have been the first to denounce the incompetence of the government for not having the ice standing by somewhere.
I get really sick of this idiocy.
I'm kind of confused by the article. Are the trucking companies making $2.25 per mile? That's several times what truck drivers normally make and even fewer get paid for sitting.
A shamockery.
Why is it that this one truck driver is in every story on the "ice fiasco"?
Well how's this Mullinaux? If they didn't do it there would be people like you, listening to the talking heads saying FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers were screwing around and not doing anything. Then you and others who want instant gratification (no, not your kids in the bathroom) would demand their scalps.
Is that clear to you now?
My mother has worked for one of the top paying companies for about 16 years and she makes around 34 cents per mile. Sounds like the government was paying a few drivers to do the driving of many. Typical anyway.
***For instance, is all the money paid to fire fighters to sit around waiting for the next fire "wasted?" ***
Excellent thought!
Also, in my area, and perhaps all over the country, an auto accident can result in the arrival of EMTs, an ambulance, fire trucks, and police. Sometimes only the police are needed to take a record and direct traffic. But if there's a personal injury, or the car bursts into flames, all other responders are needed.
athanellen made Bush do it.
As a resident of a hurricane ravaged area, two things needed most were gasoline and ice. We waited in line every day for ice and water rations from the National guard, and were glad to get it. I had no Idea that the ice came from Florida, but when those big trucks drove down my street in convoys I was thankful they made the long journey.
I know some fellers who are getting $1.75 per mile to pull RVs from FL to LA. My daughter says that's the going rate for this area. And rates are a bit lower here than the rest of the country. She pilots oversize loads and makes $1.25 per mile.
Amazing, a guy who doesn't bow down to the golden calf. Now that's news. Government wasting money? If they didn't waste money that would be news.
This guy is having his 15 minutes of fame, repeating this story over and over to every OLD MEDIA outlet that would print it.
Leave it to the OLD MEDIA to find the one story that makes President Bush look bad.
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.