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Two Shenanigans For Tuesday
By Greg L | 19 June 2007 | Fairfax County, Virginia Politics | 2 Comments
If it ever crossed your mind to wonder what the point was in being active in state and local politics, here are two items that should firmly answer any lingering questions. First up we have Jim Patrick’s excellent piece on how the State of Virginia managed to spend millions of dollars to make the system that manages voter registration even worse than the 1970’s-era system it replaced. Second, we have a very good DC Examiner article about who wins and loses in Fairfax County’s recent decision to go forward with a metrorail expansion project which has inexplicably become a billion dollars more expensive even before the project gets underway. Together these add considerable evidence to support the maxim that ‘we only get the government we prove we deserve.’
From Jim Patrick:
If [the] error level [in the Virginia Elections and Registration Information System] continues —or even if the errors are cut in half— there will be statewide pandemonium. A twelve percent error (any and all elections closer than 56% to 44%) will result in court challenges, charges of partisan fraud, and disenfranchisement. Those charges will be well deserved; there is no excuse for software so late and so flawed.
And now the DC Examiner:
With a price tag now estimated at a staggering $5.14 billion, extending Metrorail through Tysons Corner to Dulles International Airport has become the most expensive transit project in the nation, as well as the largest public works project in Virginia history.
It’s also become the most controversial — with enough backroom intrigue, high-stakes political deal making, official secrecy, conflict of interest and questionable legality to make Tony Soprano envious.
A group of wealthy Tysons landowners stand to make a windfall, but lots of other Northern Virginians won’t be so lucky.
The first item appears to point to a contract management problem in the Commonwealth’s office that handles information technology projects, and while none of the folks overseeing this project are elected officials, stories have circulated for years about how weak the procurement and contract management system has been in Richmond, and it’s certainly something the Governor and his predecessors should have addressed long ago. Combating mismanagement and waste at state agencies should be a high priority for elected officials, but unless citizens complain about the issue, it seems that there’s little incentive for these elected officials to actually do something productive.
The second item is much more directly a problem with elected officials in Fairfax County. I don’t know if there’s any way to explain this unconscionable series of bad decisions without concluding that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors as a whole has been thoroughly corrupted. The extensive official secrecy, no-bid contracts, exploding costs and the grants of authority to unaccountable quasi-government entities makes no sense at all if there is any interest in ensuring cost-effectiveness and that the project will actually address the problems it’s supposed to solve. This spending spree, which vastly exceeds all the combined transportation improvements in the state planned over the next ten years, is an example of malfeasance that screams out for immediate legislative reform at the state level.
If the electorate continues to sit on the sidelines, it can expect to see more of these shenanigans, not fewer, since inaction only will encourage those with an interest in big-dollar state spending projects to belly up to the public trough for their piece of the action.
The opinions expressed here are solely the views of the author, and not representative of the position of any organization, political party, doughnut shop, knitting guild, or waste recycling facility, but may be correctly attributed to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. If anything in the above article has offended you, please click here to receive an immediate apology.
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Re: the metro out at Tyson’s. Do the tunnel-fans actually believe the cost estimates on digging a tunnel for the metro?
Have they ever heard of the “Big Dig” in Boston?
The Tyson’s tunnel would be a cost overrun disaster just waiting to happen.
Can someone explain why they still continue to have 4 pretty much unused lanes, hundreds of millions of dollars of road, in the middle of the toll road for airport traffic, while at the same time hundreds of millions are spent to study how to spend 5 billion on a train to Dulles? Why am I the only one that thinks opening up those lanes to everyone is a cheap, good idea to aleviate the Dulles corridor traffic? I’m sure there is some old law that says it has to be that way, but the alternative, 5 bil on a train, just seems silly.