Schools Call in the Army

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 24, 2000 | by Sean Paige

You know you're in a real stew when you have to call in the efficiency experts in the U.S. government to bail you out of a bad situation! But that's what is happening in Los Angeles, where city officials, stung by a string of multimillion-dollar screwups, are asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, builders of dams, levees and congressional pork projects everywhere, to oversee the construction of 150 new schools in the city.

The cavalry call was necessary, city officials say, because corruption and incompetence in the process left a $200 million high-school project languishing half-finished because it was sited on an allegedly contaminated former oil field, and bureaucratic bumbling led to the forfeiture of about $850 million in state bond funds. The city reportedly seized on the idea of calling in the reinforcements after the prompting of Democratic Rep. Howard Berman and hopes the Corps will provide engineering, environmental and contracting support, at cost, while the school district pockets the savings in overhead.

"I think the Corps of Engineers brings substantial increased credibility to the district's [school] building activities," L.A. Schools Chief Operation Officer Howard Miller said of the move. "It is an unimpeachable partner that is external and has a distinguished reputation."

The Corps has some experience building schools -- on military bases, for instance, or when hurricanes slammed South Florida and Puerto Rico -- and it also helped out after another cataclysm -- called Marion Barry -- cut a swath of destruction through the District of Columbia. But do we really want it meddling, invited or not, in business that is clearly a local, municipal responsibility? Of course, you'll hear no complaining from the Corps which, like any forward-thinking bureaucracy, always is looking for an opportunity to diversify its portfolio and perpetuate its existence.