Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Bob Boccaccio
John Brooks Rice of New Orleans received $18,000 from the federal government to monitor media coverage of the Obama administration’s handling of the Gulf oil crisis for two months. A spokesman for the Coast Guard has said that it expects BP to reimburse the Guard for Rice’s salary.
Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group that endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and has blasted Republican presidential hopeful Sarah Palin, won a $216,625 no-bid contract to study seabirds since the oil spill.
The Interior Department paid $10,000 to videographer Bob Boccaccio of Baton Rouge to produce three minutes of video of a rig inspection. AP noted that it usually pays $1,000 a day for a one-person video crew.
These are just three of the examples uncovered by the Associated Press after reviewing the hundreds of government contracts awarded by Washington to address the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, raising questions about potential government waste of taxpayer dollars in some instances.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
How the Feds Wasted Money in Gulf Oil Spill Debacle (by Sharon Theimer, Associated Press)
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