After Hurricane Irma carved a path of destruction through the Florida Keys, the task of managing the cleanup fell on Florida Gov. Rick Scott. For reasons that remain mysterious, however, Scott chose to ignore contracts already arranged by the state for cleanup and debris removal, instead ordering new, “emergency” contracts from other companies–including a company that had no prior emergency experience.
Jim DeFede reports that we now have an estimate of how much those Scott-pushed contracts cost taxpayers: As much as $30 million.
CBS4 News reviewed more than $43 million worth of invoices submitted to the state through February by Munilla Construction Management (MCM) and Community Asphalt, the two firms selected to operate in the Keys under the emergency contract.
If the Governor had instead used one of the companies already under contract with the state, it would have cost taxpayers as little as $13 million to do the exact same work.
Not only did Scott’s act cost substantially more than the previously arranged contracts, it caused chaos in the days following Irma, as some of those companies had already pre-positioned crews in preparation for cleanup before learning that their services would not be used. Former Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner was blunt about Scott’s scrapping of existing contracts in order to sign new, non-competitive bids: “It just makes no sense at all.”