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Waste & Fraud
If we as taxpayers pay the salaries of the people who run our air travel system, shouldn't they run the system efficiently?
It's an important question, because a dollar wasted is a dollar not spent making the system safe for passengers and its employees. And, it's our money that's being spent.
Americans for Safer Air Travel is beginning its efforts to bring some accountability to the bureaucracies that are running our air travel system. We have collected some studies and reports from government watchdogs that suggest there is a lot of fat that can be cut from the system and a lot that can be better managed. In our opinion, any money saved should be redirected to efforts to make the system safer and more pleasant to use.
- Last summer, Republican Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa forced the U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) Inspector General to look at the hundreds of millions of dollars its Federal Aviation Administration is spending on private contracts. They were put onto the problem by an FAA whistleblower who came forward information about possible fraud within the agency. In an August 17 letter to FAA Administrator Marion Blakey, the two said: "Support service contracts at the FAA represent over $1 billion in taxpayer funds and should be scrutinized to ensure that every dollar is spent as intended and not subject to fraud, waste and abuse." (Tulsa [Oklahoma] World, 8/20/05)
- The DOT Inspector General had found in May 13, 2005 report, there were problems with "costs, schedule or performance baselines" for nine of FAA's 16 major programs. And, 11 of 16 big purchases by the FAA had an explosion in their costs from $8.9 billion to $14.5 billion — an $5.6 billion total overrun. Scheduling delays for these projects ranged from two to 12 years.
- That same inspector general, Kenneth Mead, told Congress that same month that the FAA needed "a firm control" on a large number of contracts — the FAA doesn't actually know how many — valued at over $2 billion. He said that in particular, the FAA needed to "take proactive steps for the new $2 billion program that will replace the computer program -- actually the computer brain -- that runs high-altitude air traffic." Mead, one of the most respected inspector generals in the history of the Department of Transportation, said that regarding support contracts, "we've got serious concerns over exactly how contracts -- some contractor work -- is differing from the work that FAA employees do, but at much greater cost to the government, sometimes double." (House Aviation Subcommittee Hearing, 5/4/05)
- A 2004 investigative article in Government Executive Magazine showed that the cost to overhaul the "30-year-old air traffic controller and maintenance workstations at 162 sites across the country with color displays, processors and computer software" had doubled from the original $940 million to $1.69 billion. The FAA has only installed 19 systems at the 162 civilian sites. Just 12 of them are fully tested and certified. (Government Executive, 5/15/04) The delays in this overhaul effort, known as STARS (Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System), pushed back its projected finish time from 2005 to 2012, forcing the FAA to spend $240 million more for an interim radar terminal system at 140 locations. (Government Executive, 5/15/04) The big defense contractor, Raytheon, is the principal contractor to do the STARS overhaul.
- A June 2003 U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Audit showed that of 20 major air traffic control modernization projects by the FAA, there was "$4.3 billion in cost growth and schedule slips of one to seven years" in 14 of them. (Government Executive, 5/15/04)
- The FAA has been spending a huge amount of our money just putting in a reliable accounting system. In February 2003, that system had been six years and $38 million in the making, but then-Inspector General Mead said that the system hadn't been put in place. Arizona Senator John McCain said the situation was a "debacle," and he extracted a promise from FAA Administrator Blakey that the FAA's new cost accounting system would be in place by 2004.
- "I will tell you that it's a work in progress. But we'll get it done, and certainly by 2004 which is further out than I would like, but we will make that," Blakey told McCain. (Senate Commerce Committee Hearing, 2/11/03)
That hasn't happened yet.
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