Executive

Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday: City Cleaned Up Building Before Demolition

Shreveport, Louisiana cleaned mold and mildew from a building – an abandoned housing project – then demolished it anyway.

Published

3 months ago

August 15, 2024

Adam Andrzejewski

Shreveport, Louisiana skyline at night long-term exposure with well-trafficked thoroughfare in foreground

Topline: In 2010, a city in Louisiana made plans to demolish a crumbling housing development and then spent $1.5 million to remove mold and mildew from the building.

A building already slated for demolition

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 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including the money spent on mold remediation — which would be worth $2.2 million today.

Key facts: The City of Shreveport got a stimulus check from the federal government by promising to renovate its affordable housing. It received $1.7 million but only planned to use $100,000 of it to remove mold and mildew in a complex called Wilkinson Terrace.

Ten months later, Shreveport had barely spent any of its funds. Federal officials reminded the city that the funds must be returned if they weren’t spent by the end of the year.

The city scrambled to use the money before the deadline, awarding $1.5 million to remove the mold at Wilkinson Terrace.

That still wasn’t enough for workers to do a proper cleanup job. Federal auditors later found “pest excrement caked on surfaces that were to have been cleaned and disinfected.”

Abuse of use-it-or-lose-it

Renovating Wilkinson Terrace made almost no sense. The building, a hot spot for gang and drug violence in the 1980s, was already being considered for demolition. It closed in 2019 and was torn down in 2021.

Federal auditors recommended that the government take back its stimulus funds, saying “The Authority mismanaged its Recovery Act funds by entering into imprudent contracts to meet the March 17, 2010 obligation deadline.”

Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.

Summary: Wilkinson Terrace is a textbook example of the “use it or lose it” spending that occurs at all levels of government. Many officials would rather use appropriated funds on wasteful purchases than admit their budget is too high.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by CEO & founder, Adam Andrzejewski, with Jeremy Portnoy. Learn more at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

Adam Andrzejewski

CEO at OpenTheBooks.com | Website | + posts

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.