USDOT OIG report: 19 percent of 8,000 stimulus projects "received minimal competition"

We all know that President Obama's 'shovel ready' promise in regards to his $862 billion stimulus was either an exercise in naïveté or a bald-faced lie. When dealing with government construction projects, bids have to go out first.

According to a US Department of Transportation Office of the Inspector General report released earlier this month about Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, $27 billion of that largesse went to the Federal Highway Administration.

The OIG used nine states in its sample for its report and it discovered that 19 percent of the 8,365 ARRA contracts that the FHWA awarded to state DOTs "received minimal competition—receiving just 1 or 2 bids."

What effect does that have on those projects? The OIG's report states that "prices for contracts with 1 or 2 bids were, on average, 11 percent higher than prices for contracts that received 3 bids."

And what can be done? Well, not a whole lot, because the OIG reports that the "FHWA lacks the oversight mechanisms needed to determine whether ARRA and other federally funded contracts have been sufficiently competed."

These findings aren't as outrageous as the OIG report on the notorious GSA conference in Las Vegas. He may not have ever said it, but a quote from Sen. Everett M. Dirksen that has made its rounds on the internet--which the legendary Illinois Republican would have endorsed--goes like this: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."

Read the entire USDOT OIG report here.

A special thanks for this story goes to Trent Seibert of the Texas Watchdog who taught attendees at FreedomWorks' BlogCon in Charlotte how to find stories from OIG reports--and a whole lot more.

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