Executive
Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday: Opera House Gets A Pricey Facelift
Topline: Fixing a bad haircut or a poor paint job is easy. Undoing the renovation of an entire building is less simple — unless the federal government steps in with half a million dollars.
Restoring the Tibbits Opera House
Taxpayers spent $500,000 in 2008 to restore the Tibbits Opera House in Coldwater, Mich. to its original design after the building had already been remodeled twice.
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 $500,000 spent on the Tibbits Opera House. The money would be worth over $730,000 today.
Key facts: Tibbits Opera House opened in 1882 at a cost of $25,000 and is now the second-oldest theater in Michigan.
The building went through a flurry of ownership changes and renovations. One owner transformed the building into a movie theater in 1934. Another group of investors turned it into a community theater after the building fell into disrepair.
By 1998, the Tibbits Opera Foundation had decided to restore the building to its original design, despite lacking the money to do so.
From the Highway Administration
The Federal Highway Administration’s National Scenic Byways Program came through with the grant money in November 2008, and the process was complete: after over 100 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, the building’s facade looked exactly as it did before any money was spent.
A total of $3.4 million has been spent on the theater’s restoration, which continues today. Only $700,000 came from the theater’s owners; the rest came from grants and fundraisers. The state of Michigan has helped fund stage lights, a new electrical system and new boilers.
Summary: Today the opera house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, just as it likely would have been had its owners left the building untouched.
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) was 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 passed away in his sleep at his home in in Hinsdale, Illinois, on August 18, 2024. He is survived by his wife Kerry and three daughters. He also served as a lector at St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church and finished the Chicago Marathon eight times (PR 3:58.49 in 2022).
Waste of the Day articles published after August 18, 2024 are considered posthumous publications.
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