Executive
Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday: Federal Government Builds Underwater Trail
Topline: The federal government spends money to maintain over 1,300 national hiking trails that are easily accessible to all Americans — but it also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a trail that is underwater.
Placing buoys to mark an underwater trail
In 2008, two Democratic senators from Maryland earmarked $446,500 to place buoys along the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail so that visitors could sail along the path once traveled by the famous explorer.
There was just one limiting factor: travelers needed to provide their own boat.
That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn’s Wastebook 2008 included 65 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $1.3 billion, including the earmark for the underwater hiking trail — which would be worth $660,000 today.
Key facts: The John Smith trail covers 3,000 miles in six states stretching from Virginia to New York and was first established by President George W. Bush in 2006.
Sens. Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski sent over more funds in 2008 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget to install “talking buoys” that gave travelers info on the weather and the history of the region.
Needed: a boat
Miraculously, that was only enough money to buy markers so visitors could see the trail from land.
If parkgoers wanted to actually use the trail, they would need to provide their own boat. That’s perhaps a less equitable arrangement than Smith envisioned when establishing the first English colony in America.
Boat-less visitors had to wait until 2015, when the federal government spent another $2 million to build canoe launches around the trail.
Summary: The Department of Transportation bans earmarks from being used on projects that most of the public can’t access. Who would have thought a similar rule might be necessary for our national parks?
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
Adam Andrzejewski (say: Angie-eff-ski) is the CEO/founder of OpenTheBooks.com. Before dedicating his life to public service, Adam co-founded HomePages Directories, a $20 million publishing company (1997-2007). His works have been featured on the BBC, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, C-SPAN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, FOX News, CNN, National Public Radio (NPR), Forbes, Newsweek, and many other national media.
Today, OpenTheBooks.com is the largest private repository of U.S. public-sector spending. Mission: post "every dime, online, in real time." In 2022, OpenTheBooks.com captured nearly all public expenditures in the country, including nearly all disclosed federal government spending; 50 of 50 state checkbooks; and 25 million public employee salary and pension records from 50,000 public bodies across America.
The group's aggressive transparency and forensic auditing of government spending has led to the assembly of grand juries, indictments, and successful prosecutions; congressional briefings, hearings, and subpoenas; Government Accountability Office (GAO) audits; Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports; federal legislation; and much more.
Our Honorary Chairman - In Memoriam is U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, MD.
Andrzejewski's federal oversight work was included in the President's Budget To Congress FY2021. The budget cited his organization by name, bullet-pointed their findings, and footnoted/hyperlinked to their report.
Posted on YouTube, Andrzejewski's presentation, The Depth of the Swamp, at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar 2020 in Naples, Florida received 3.8 million views.
Andrzejewski has spoken at the Columbia School of Journalism, Harvard Law School and the law schools at Georgetown and George Washington regarding big data journalism. As a senior policy contributor at Forbes, Adam had nearly 20 million pageviews on 206 published investigations. In 2022, investigative fact-finding on Dr. Fauci's finances led to his cancellation at Forbes.
In 2022, Andrzejewski did 473 live television and radio interviews across broadcast, major cable platforms, and radio shows. Andrzejewski is the author of The Waste of the Day column at Real Clear Policy. The column is syndicated by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owners of nearly 200 ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX affiliates across USA.
Andrzejewski lives in Hinsdale, Illinois with his wife Kerry and three daughters. He is a lector at St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church and has finished the Chicago Marathon eight times (PR 3:58.49 in 2022).
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