January 23rd 2009
Management By Government – Lessons In Ineptness
A
s the Obama Admin stands poised and ready to impose their statist regime on America, injecting government into every layer of our life in the grand tradition of FDR, it’s not a bad idea to spend a little time analyzing just how government performs.
Here’s a handy case study:
Facing forecasts of wet weather that could flush tons of urban trash out to sea and onto local beaches, Los Angeles County authorities scrambled Thursday to reinstall a boom across the outlet of the Los Angeles River to keep debris out of Long Beach Harbor.
The boom had been decommissioned Monday because the county Department of Public Works ran out of money to keep it operating.
The problem, according to a spokesman for the department, was that a company which had been paid $450,000 to operate the boom this year [sic? $450,000 in three weeks?!] — and remove the trash it harvested — had completed its contractual obligations ahead of schedule.
As a result, Frey Environmental Inc. of Newport Beach on Monday was ordered to take the boom out of service while public works authorities sought permission from the county Board of Supervisors to renew its contract.
Complicating matters, the board canceled its meeting Tuesday because several members had traveled to Washington to attend the presidential inauguration. (LA Times)
It’s expected that trash will flow unfettered to sea until well into February. Now, we used to just let that happen because none but the fringes of society cared much whether trash washed out to sea or not, but now at least the enviro-packed regulatory agencies care greatly, so they have imposed regulations (more statism) with fines to boot, in order to force municipalities to pick up after their littering citizens (more statism).
Imagine what would happen to a private sector manager if his operation had to shut down for several weeks because he let a contract run out. Expect no such repercussions here.
What you can expect is higher costs, since Frey needlessly had to shut down and now will have to re-start its operations – and because one branch of government, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, will impose a hefty fine on another branch of government, Los Angeles County, for being out of compliance with the trash TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) regulation.
So government incompetency leads to higher cost government and fines, which government does not have to pay. We do.
And they want us to trust government with our health!
Hat-tip: Jim, whose group Trails 4 All has picked up tons of trash from local watersheds without being forced to by government.
Posted in Bureacracy, LA, Regulatory Madness | No Comments yet » | |
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