Topline: In 2010, a city in Louisiana made plans to demolish a crumbling housing development and then spent $1.5 million to remove mold and mildew from the building.
That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname "Dr. No" by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn't stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn's Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including the money spent on mold remediation — which would be worth $2.2 million today.
Key facts: The City of Shreveport got a stimulus check from the federal government by promising to renovate its affordable housing. It received $1.7 million but only planned to use $100,000 of it to remove mold and mildew in a complex called Wilkinson Terrace.
Ten months later, Shreveport had barely spent any of its funds. Federal officials reminded the city that the funds must be returned if they weren’t spent by the end of the year.
The city scrambled to use the money before the deadline, awarding $1.5 million to remove the mold at Wilkinson Terrace.
That still wasn’t enough for workers to do a proper cleanup job. Federal auditors later found “pest excrement caked on surfaces that were to have been cleaned and disinfected.”
Renovating Wilkinson Terrace made almost no sense. The building, a hot spot for gang and drug violence in the 1980s, was already being considered for demolition. It closed in 2019 and was torn down in 2021.
Federal auditors recommended that the government take back its stimulus funds, saying “The Authority mismanaged its Recovery Act funds by entering into imprudent contracts to meet the March 17, 2010 obligation deadline.”
Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.
Summary: Wilkinson Terrace is a textbook example of the “use it or lose it” spending that occurs at all levels of government. Many officials would rather use appropriated funds on wasteful purchases than admit their budget is too high.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by CEO & founder, Adam Andrzejewski, with Jeremy Portnoy. Learn more at OpenTheBooks.com.
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