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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 19, 2004)
TSA criticized for excessive spending Transportation Security Administration didn't follow procedures with $1.2 billion contract, inspector says about the slow pace of installation of bomb-detection equipment in air ports and have criticized TSA’s spending practices. Last week Ervin’s office issued a report criticizing the TSA for an “un necessarily expensive” banquet marking its two-year anniversary. The November 2003 celebration, held at a lavish Washington hotel, cost $461,745, including nearly $200,000 for travel and lodging and $85,000 for a party planner. Ervin’s office spent 11 months in vestigating the Boeing contract and found the profit paid to Boeing was “disproportionately high when com pared to Boeing’s cost and risk and compared to what other agencies al low as profit under such contracts.” For example, it found that while Boeing incurred costs of $39 million serving as project manager and su pervising subcontractors around the country, it received $82 million from TSA to cover those costs, for a rate of return of 210 percent. Boeing spokesman Fernando Vivanco defended his company’s work. He said Boeing did a job that “everybody said could not be done. We are pleased to have helped the TSA restore the confidence of the traveling public.” Boeing also has come under fire for military contracts. Last year, the Pentagon punished the company for stealing trade secrets from rival Lockheed Martin to help win rocket contracts. Boeing also lost an Air Force tanker lease deal after an Air Force employee, hired by Boeing, rigged the contract to boost prices. She was recently sentenced to nine months in prison. Ervin’s office made a series of rec ommendations to TSA. Among them, he said the agency should come up with a plan to evaluate Boeing’s performance and recoup any unreasonable fees. TSA responded that the agency is reviewing the contract to make sure any extra costs are valid. BY KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — The Transporta tion Security Administration has over paid Boeing Co. by at least $49 million on a contract to install explosive de tection equipment at U.S. commercial airports, according to an internal au dit released Monday. Homeland Security Department In spector General Clark Kent Ervin found TSA failed to follow appropri ate procedures in awarding Boeing the contract, worth $1.2 billion with the possibility of lucrative extensions. TSA gave Boeing at least $44 mil lion in “provisional award fees” — incentives designed to motivate the company to perform at a high level — without ever evaluating the job Boeing was doing. “TSA did not follow sound con tracting practices in awarding and administering the Boeing contract,” the report concluded. Boeing was awarded the contract in June 2002 to install more than 7,000 explosive detection devices and systems at 429 airports. TSA ini tially estimated the contract was worth $508 million and would last seven months, with options to ex tend it. But TSA modified the con tract 54 times by December 2003, in creasing the base value to $1.2 billion and the length to 18 months, the report found. TSA spokeswoman Amy Von Wal ter said the contract and payment structure were reasonable “given the competitive market conditions and the schedule-driven environment re quired to meet the numerous con gressional mandates which existed during the first year of the agency. ” Lawmakers have complained Gigabyte 7T600-RZ Motherboard 64MB GeForce 4 4000 Video 40 GB 7200 R1}M Hard Drive 512 MB DDR Memory Microsoft Windows XP Home 17” .27 NEC Monitor “PowerPlayer" AMO Sempron™2500+ $040.09 Virtual Office Svs terns Abit A VS Socket 939 Motherboard 128 MB A TI Radeon 9800 Video 120 GB Seagate SATA Hard Drive 1 GB PC3200 Memory Microsoft Windows XP Home 17” .27 NEC Monitor “Ultimate Scorpion” MMOAthlon 64™3500+ $1799.99 3131 West 11th. Ave. AMDtl Prices subject to change. Visit us on the web at WWW.VOSCOMPUTERS.COM Go Ducks! VOS Computers of Eugene, LLC Systems are also available at the UO Bookstore. Prices good through 10/31/04. Continued from page 4 Rahim Alikhel, identified the election worker as Dr. Sattar, a local physician who had helped organize the vote and was traveling to his clinic when he died. The police did not give Sat tar’s full name. The other victims were the doc tor’s nephew, his driver and two oth er local men, Alikhel said. The explosion was the latest in a string of deadly incidents casting a cloud over the election but failing to knock it off course. At least 12 election workers died in the run-up to the vote, and three po lice officers were killed on polling day by suspected militants shooting at a convoy carrying ballot boxes in cen tral Uruzgan. Despite poor weather and Taliban threats of more attacks, an estimated 8 million Afghans cast their ballots in a democratic experiment supposed to cement the country’s re-emergence since the Taliban fell in 2001 after a U.S. invasion. By Monday, Karzai was dominat ing with 1.68 million votes, or 20.9 percent of the total cast, tallied. But his closest challenger, Qanooni, claimed to have evidence of organ ized fraud favoring Karzai. Official results are expected by Oct. 31, but the winner should be clear this week. While officials acknowledge minor problems during the vote, Karzai’s opponents allege ballot boxes were stuffed with votes for Karzai in at least four provinces. 020450| party o'aU^Peyef >\aV H2o your <aundVr/'- y Emerald Laundromat Always Clean 165 E. 1 7th (Behind Safeway And Hirons) Open 7am-1 1pm Daily Your planet thanks you for usins our machines—the most eco-friendly ever made! Our exceptional equipment gives you: • faster wash/dry! • cleaner clothes! • more clothes per load—fewer $$$! • more fun— TV & Free WiFi! How to clean all A your outdoor gear... an outdoor specialist /M will be on hand. VoA Bring your gear to wash and your questions! 6 pm - 9 pm. All of our machines are front loader machines with 18-50 lb. capacity! Continued from page 4 what the government is doing with the unexpected oil revenues is much dif ferent than during the first oil boom. ” Bourland said the rise in foreign cur rency reserves suggests the Saudi gov ernment is banking much of the wind fall and investing in foreign securities. The increase in spending on train ing young Saudis will help vocational centers and colleges nationwide in crease capacity by 250 percent over the next seven years, said Saleh al Amr, vice governor for development in the Organization for Technical Ed ucation and Vocational Training. Omar Bafaqih and Mohammed al Muhaidib, both technical college Education: Blair speaks on reform Continued from page 4 government approved his proposals. Education Secretary Charles Clarke seemed to approve the plan, telling legislators Monday it offers a “cogent ly argued, challenging and com pelling vision for the future.” Clarke said the government would respond to the plan and make “posi tive and detailed proposals” early next year. Prime Minister Tony Blair empha sized that GCSE and A-level exams would not be abolished if the propos als are implemented. “Let me be clear that the purpose of reform will be to improve upon the existing system, not to replace it,” he said in a speech in Birming ham, central England. “Reform will strengthen the existing system where it is inadequate.” Explosion: Violent incidents abound during election They also complained that the sup posedly indelible ink used at some polling stations to mark voters’ hands in an effort to prevent repeated polling turned out to be easily washable. Qanooni said at a news conference that he believed he — not Karzai — would be headed for the simple ma jority needed to avoid a run-off if the ballot had been fair. “The newborn baby of democracy in Afghanistan has been killed in front of our nation and the international community on the first day of its life,” he told reporters at his Kabul home. Almost all of Karzai’s 15 opponents have complained of cheating to a panel of three foreign experts set up to head off their threat to boycott the results. The panel has yet to report its find ings. But Baheen, the election spokesman, suggested Qanooni’s ac cusations were groundless. “There is no indication of what the candidates are saying, that boxes have been emptied and refilled,” Baheen said. “There’s nothing like that.” Few independent observers believe Qanooni, a member of the ethnic Tajik minority, could command a country deeply fractured by years of tribal and ethnic warfare. Karzai enjoys strong support among Afghanistan’s traditional rulers, the Pashtuns, and is seen as a bridge to its international backers and a leader un tainted by its bloody past. . Associated Press writers Matthew Pennington and Amir Shah contributed to this report Oil: Spending increase to help grow technical college capacity students, are happy to see more gov ernment aid for the vocational cen ters. But investing the money may be only half the battle in displacing the foreign work force that came with the last oil boom. “When 1 quit university to enroll in the technical college, people said 1 was a loser,” said Bafaqih, 26, an electronics student who shocked his family by pursuing technical training. “It wasn’t easy, but I made it.” Al-Muhaidib, a 23-year-old electron ics major, has seen the same attitudes. “People look down on Saudis in overalls,” he said. “That mentality has got to change and we can change it.”
