More Government Waste

I'm so tired of hearing nonsense & fairytales about government projects "bringing good paying jobs" to residents. For the most part, it’s totally false. Those jobs A) are paid for by our tax dollars so we're just paying ourselves; B) don't necessarily pay that well; C) are short-term (temporary) work that merely adds to the burden of the unemployed & underemployed when the project ends. It didn't happen with the football or baseball stadiums, the casino or the ridiculous tunnel under the river. Sure, a group of thug-like "community activists" have extorted rare & coveted construction jobs for totally unskilled workers on the new Pens arena, but most of us don't have connections to the kind of organized crime that pays so well.


Having worked in public construction (jails, schools, heavy-highway) for more than 10 years, I can attest that government projects cost way more than when the private sector does the same work. It costs more to build a public school than a comparable private one, to pave a mile of county road than a 5 mile private drive, etc. The reason it costs more is bureaucracy. The red-tape contractors & suppliers go through isn’t worthwhile to many companies. There’s not a big profit margin in public works. And even though private sector contractors & skilled workers are paid handsomely, public projects often have wage requirements that are out of line with industry averages, which keeps smaller companies (i.e., companies with lower overhead & less profit mark-up) out of the public work arena. In addition, arbitrary “equal opportunity” requirements also drive out smaller business while at the same time creating an entire industry of “companies” who exist solely on paper but perform no work & merely get paid so that women- & minority-owned participation rates are met. All of these things increase the cost of public projects exponentially. It also means that it keeps many good contractors & vendors out of the arena for this work. Less competition for the work drives up the price even more.

A normal construction project has costs such as architects or engineers to design it and/or oversee construction & contractors to do the work. A public project has all of that, but has the very steep added costs of paying all of the governmental entities who exist solely to deal with public construction, in addition to all of the other added costs detailed above.

My plea to my fellow citizens is thus: Let’s stop pretending that asinine public projects are good for the community as a whole because nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that we need to streamline public works by cutting bureaucracy, making government involvement in these projects more efficient, reforming the regulations to prevent fraud & waste (rather than promoting them, as the current regulations do), all of which will lower costs outright as well as widen the playing field. And more competition for contracts will lead to lower prices and MORE JOBS, permanent, well-paying jobs for skilled workers & for unskilled workers who will become skilled in this industry. Now THAT would be progress.

So instead of championing one half-baked, ridiculously expensive, hugely unpopular project with no tangible benefits to the region, we need public planning & intelligent, useful projects. Let’s get this process started by being logical, acknowledging everything that’s wrong with the current system & demanding our leaders improve the process. Let’s vow that there will be no more quarter-mile tunnels that cost more than a brand-new, state-of-the-art hospital (see costs for new UPMC Children’s). Let’s demand a stop to the additional wage requirements. If unions & employees are satisfied with their wages, we shouldn’t have the government stepping in & forcing employers to pay more. This multitude of government burdens makes public works projects unaffordable for smaller communities. And while I support the bidding process, there has to be a plan B. The communities where I live & work have gone from paying $43 per ton for road salt to over $140 per ton. Why? Not because of a salt shortage or decreased needs. They only got one bidder & since that bidder knew there was no competition, they quadrupled the price. In such situations, our idiot politicians need to be smart enough to start calling other salt suppliers until they get better prices or more participants for a re-bid.

Write to your representatives, call your local leaders, go to township or city meetings, etc. GET INVOLVED. It’s YOUR money that’s being wasted. It’s YOU who has less job options. YOUR employers are paying additional unemployment taxes to help support the millions of unemployed Pennsylvanians, when they should be putting that money back into their business to grow it & hire. The state is one of (if not the) top 4 employers in Pennsylvania & to what benefit? All detriment. We need to stop bureaucracy in it’s tracks & begin dismantling the monster of government. It must be reduced to a useful, manageable entity run by we, the people, as it was meant to be from the beginning.