A Sow’s Ear becomes a Silk Purse

Check my previous posts, My Murtha Mystery and Making Sausage, to find out how I wound up with 750 thousand dollars from Congress for an unneeded study. My task now was to fine tune the “intent” of Congress to spend it responsibly.

The reality was the true intent of Congress was for the money to get into the hands of the designated lobbyist. That meant I probably had a free hand to alter the subject of the study to something useful. As long as the American Trucking Association felt they still were in line for the funds, I figured they wouldn’t complain. I was right.

DLA had an operations research office next door to us. Their analysts were always coming up with ways to make the agency more efficient. I knew the director and stopped by with a proposition. I told him about the budget I had; he could have it as long as he could come up with a useful project that involved trucks. I’d manage getting everything on contract and then tie it with a bow and hand it over to him. In return, his office would have to manage the effort once on contract. It was a deal. He had some dispute with the Army about how to best contract for trucking (the Army was responsible for all ground freight contracts) but he didn’t quite have all the data he needed. The modified Congressional earmark would be perfect.

I still was on a mission to find competitors so I put an announcement in the commerce business daily (CBD) “Free to a good home, $750K…” Well something similar. I described what we were looking for along with the not-for-profit trucking research institute caveat. I figured ATA would go running back to their Congressman if I left that out.

In the meantime my contracting officer asked how I was going to certify whether a company met the non profit trucking research requirements. I asked her if she had a problem if we just relied on respondents to self-certify. She liked the idea. We would have the requirement in the solicitation, but we weren’t going to check if folks were compliant.

I did get a call in response to the CBD announcement. An excited fellow told me he just got his PhD from MIT and he had done his dissertation on the very subject we wanted to study; he now had his own consulting business and was interested. I wondered if he played the harpsichord as I told him about the non-profit-trucking requirement. He blew a gasket as he described what kind of an ass I was. When he was done, I told him he could call his congressman. I also gave him ATA’s phone number.

In the end we got two proposals. I don’t recall the competitor but ATA’s submission included two subcontractors – the fellow who told me about his dissertation and MIT. It was a pleasant surprise. Equally surprising was ATA pulled out all the stops. They had an impressive proposal and did not plan for a cake walk. We made the award to the lobbyist I initially despised. Ironically ATA’s competitor protested and I had to defend our decision. It was easy.
If you read all three of my posts, thanks for indulging me. I was fortunate to make use of a bad earmark and it is an accomplishment I’m proud of. The money would truly have been wasted otherwise.

With the advent of blogs, I hope some of the other frustrated public servants can point bloggers in the direction of earmarks of the type I described. A little sunshine might go a long way in curbing the problem.