Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

DelTeaz t1_jactsp8 wrote

Reply to comment by 603er in Consultants Gone Wild by ToffeeFever

“small government” is when the MTA spends $23 billion a year and you live in the highest taxed city in the entire country. Lol give me a break. You guys are losing it. Bending over backwards to blame capitalism or some other thing instead of just admitting government agencies are run by idiots in the first place. Somehow we have more funding than maybe any city in the entire world but get horrible service.

−4

603er t1_jacuwcv wrote

Not at all.

Things cost money. That’s a fact. We can expect something like a massive subway system to cost a lot of money.

What’s frustrating is that in other relatively comparable cities, governments have implemented transit systems that cost less money. Clearly then, government is capable of doing this.

A main issue is that with our reliance on contractors and not funding internal agency staff properly, projects become bloated and costly and we say “what are we paying the MTA so much for!” That’s a fair question, but doesn’t mean that government itself is to blame, especially if private contractors are running up cost. The blame lies at how the government is staffed and how it goes about it’s business.

Again, as seen elsewhere, governments are able to make this work.

13

DelTeaz t1_jacvszi wrote

By definition the government itself is to blame. Who else spends the money??

It’s not like it’s stolen at gunpoint by the consultants. The whole institution is corrupt and they knowingly pay way above market rates for everything. It’s not their money so they don’t care. Been that way for years now and nothing is going to change that without drastic action. Whether it’s privatization or a complete federal takeover who knows.

1

603er t1_jacwvsg wrote

Of course I should have said that “government as an institution isn’t to blame”.

The current government and its policies are to blame, sure. But government as a system isn’t the issue, surely it can’t be if elected officials in other nations find ways to publicly fund and oversee massive metro systems.

The goal now becomes to reform our governments policies to make it work better and cut out middle men.

Part of that process is having internal staff, based on the article. That will mean attracting talent to work for government agencies themselves, which means having competitive salaries for them.

4

DelTeaz t1_jad3lzk wrote

Of course, but this is just scapegoating “consultants”

1