Ken Kusmer has a story for the Associated Press on a bit of corruption in the Daniels’ Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA). Richard Rhoad was the chief financial officer at FSSA. He was also president of a company called Allied Financial Services, LLC. Rhoad left FSSA on January 13, 2006.
On November 17, 2005, FSSA secretary Mitch Roob signed a $1 million contract between FSSA and Allied. Richard Rhoad also signed the contract, not in his capacity as FSSA’s chief financial officer but as Allied’s President. However, even the Daniels administration apparently has limits, because Gov. Daniels’ budget director Charles Schalliol didn’t sign off on the contract.
Instead, they merely let Rhoad leave his post at FSSA which paid $100,000 per year only to turn around as a private contractor and do the same job for $180,000 per year.
And this, dear readers, is one of the main problems with government privatization. Citizens and front-line workers get stiffed while cronies get rich. And this is just what’s happening with a relatively cash-strapped organization like the Family and Social Services Administration. I can only imagine what kind of shennanigans they’ll get up to with the tsunami of cash coming down the Toll Road pipeline. (I’m sure whatever it is will make Garton’s lifetime healthcare look like chump change.)
Update: I neglected to mention that Taking Down Words seems to have the blogospheric lead on this story with posts here, here, and here.
Whats’s so desmaying about this story and many others similar is that it’s always been a rule of thumb that private money is nobody else’s business…and it by extension,even if it comes from public to private,its still nobody’s business. No public accountabilty for private funds must be part of our fear of creeping socialism.But People DO get upset when they read these stories of private excesses,so maybe we’ll have a more discerning judgment in the future,and look at private and public as equally a matter of public concern.( not just in sexual matters when private already is considered public business by many)
There is almost a sense of aristocracy in this country such that if a poor person gets money they may not deserve, there is intense public outrage. But, if a rich person gets money they don’t deserve, folks tend to shrug their shoulders and go on about their business.
what’s doubly bad about this is that there is very little legislative oversight of these vendor contracts. People never realize their potential for waste and utter badness until scandal hits and the audits are front-page news.
Doug,
Indeed, it seems we are all Ayn Rand Objectivists now. It is she who had one of her protagonists state:
I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved.
Ponder that. The taking of the undeserved is a second-rate injustice, at worst.
A neat philosophy, and in perfect harmony with conservatives’ obsessive pursuit of extractive industries and dogmatic belief that the extortion of economic rents equals the creation of value.