Taxpayer Money

A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the U.S. Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received. The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the U.S. military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash.

YESTERDAY, WE ANALYZED GOV. MARTIN O'Malley's proposed budget. There was a heavy response on our Web site, baltimoresun.com, much of it quite emotional. Here's a sampling: Michael, of Baltimore, wrote: This budget is a bloated piece of garbage. Why does spending have to go up EVERY YEAR? Do people's wages go up every year? No. Bill, of Catonsville, wrote: I would love to know what the raises are or will be for state employees, starting with O'Malley, this coming fiscal year. I would also like to know how much of the increases for our "investment" in education are for teachers compared to salary and benefit increases for administrators.

Baltimore's City Council shot down portions of a proposed charter amendment yesterday that would have made it easier for City Hall to spend taxpayer money - but that would have reduced public advertising requirements and independent oversight of that spending. On a unanimous vote, the council advanced a significantly watered-down version of the legislation, which was introduced by Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration. Though supporters vowed to resurrect the most controversial portions of the bill at a later date, the recent debate gave Dixon's leading mayoral challenger a ready-made opportunity to raise ethical questions from her time as City Council president.

WASHINGTON --Virtually every measure of the performance of Iraq's oil, electricity, water and sewer sectors has fallen below pre-invasion values even though $16 billion of U.S. taxpayer money has been disbursed in the Iraq reconstruction program, government witnesses told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. Of seven measures of infrastructure performance presented at the committee hearing by the inspector-general's office, only one was above pre-invasion values. Those that had slumped below those values were electrical generation capacity, hours of power available in a day in Baghdad, oil and heating oil production, and numbers of Iraqis with sewage service and drinkable water.

The University System of Maryland is proposing to sell a lavish but little-used Georgian-style mansion and 20 acres atop a bluff overlooking the Susquehanna River as part of an effort to save taxpayers money, officials said yesterday. The spectacular Donaldson Brown estate - with its 21 bedrooms, carriage house and sweeping staircase - has been a conference center for the University of Maryland, Baltimore, since 1965, when it was donated by the family of the General Motors executive. The system is accepting bids from anyone interested in buying the Cecil County property or working with the university system to renovate the conference center and lease it, said David H. Nevins, chairman of the university system's Board of Regents.

Levees in New Orleans weren't the only barricades breached by Hurricane Katrina. The flimsy restraints that Congress was trying to impose on its budget process earlier this year collapsed within moments of the first angry critique of federal failures in protecting the Gulf Coast and assuring a speedy rescue of the victims. In their rush to spare themselves blame, the lawmakers quickly approved more than $60 billion in emergency relief money and expect to approve at least $50 billion more within weeks - all of which will have to be borrowed because the federal budget is in the red. What's particularly dismaying is that Congress seems to have learned nothing from the catastrophe and from the deep flaws in its pork-barrel procedures Katrina exposed so clearly.

WASHINGTON - The Central America Free Trade Agreement debate is heating up, and one part of the proposed pact has not received the attention it deserves - an overlooked section that offers further evidence why Congress should emphatically reject CAFTA. Chapter 9 of the agreement covers government procurement and establishes a rule of "national treatment" in government purchasing. This means that under CAFTA, each participating nation must treat goods, services and suppliers from the other CAFTA nations in a manner that is "no less favorable" than it treats domestic firms when awarding contracts.

After a messy, public battle for power at the port of Baltimore ended with the resignation of its chief executive this year, frustrated lawmakers and port interests urgently debated how to separate politics and waterfront business. There were private grumbling, State House hearings and a proposed bill to cut some of the port's ties to the administration of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. but no consensus. Now, a recently completed report commissioned by the state, at a cost of $300,000, offers advice on running the port more like a business and less like a state agency.

In the view of Anne Arundel County's auditor, three county officials may have taken the spirit of giving too far, using taxpayer money to send holiday greeting cards. County Executive Janet S. Owens, Sheriff George F. Johnson IV and Fire Chief Roger C. Simonds spent more than $3,000 on cards and postage last year, according to a memorandum from County Auditor Teresa Sutherland. The memo, distributed Monday to members of the County Council and obtained by The Sun, begins: "I am writing to advise you of spending by the Sheriff's Office, the Fire Department and the County Executive's Office that is, in my opinion, an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds."

WASHINGTON -- Looking at the midterm elections, the Republican takeover of the Senate and increased majority in the House were only two of the surprising events of a bizarre campaign season. In becoming the first first-term president in 68 years to gain seats in both houses of Congress in the off-year elections (since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934), George W. Bush stumped furiously even as he pursued one war and planned another. He raised unprecedented millions for GOP congressional candidates and took Air Force One to every corner of the country and several times to certain states with close races.