Tuesday 24 August 2010

A spiffing example of why regulations are bad

Here's a thing:

California is having massive budget problems. On an unrelated note, a $578,000,000 school is unveiled in Los Angeles. On another completely unrelated note, the district has a shortfall of $640,000,000. The school comes complete with murals, marble memorial, swimming pool, and public park. This will be the most expensive public school in American history.


Dude, WTF? More than half a billion fucking dollars on a fucking school? Does it have gold plated shitters or what?

And given that the district has an enormous shortfall, was that the best fucking use of taxpayer funding? Of course it fucking wasn't. But guess what? This fucking abortion was a direct consequence of cast-iron regulations created for situation A, that completely fuck up situation B:

By law, these funds could not be used to fund teacher salaries or to back fill budget shortfalls currently being experienced by the District and its [sic] meets the Board goal of relieving overcrowding in all our schools.


So, they couldn't use the funds for a useful purpose because they came with some arbitrary strings attached, and the district has a regulatory requirement to reduce overcrowding. So they pissed out over half a billion US on a fucking school, instead.

Jesus wept.

6 comments:

ObtuseMusings said...

Yet the kids from there will never come good until they hit 18 and make a sex tape.

Such a waste of money.. They could have opened up a whole campus for different ages but I guess that thought never crossed their doughnut hazed mind

RantinRab said...

I was fizzing when a school in my town was built for £27 million, paid for by generations of tax payers for the exclusive use of Roman Catholics.

Kingbingo said...

This happens here, slightly smaller scale granted but still.

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr Clown

The arbitrary carving up of budgets between 'capital' and 'revenue' expenditure is behind this insanity.

'Capital' items last whereas revenue items don't in the simplistic administration of money, but they are interchangeable. Years ago the NHS were reported to be spending £x,000 per year per patient on liquid oxygen supplies. They were unable to buy oxygen concentrators to do the same job for £y,000, where y = 2x, because they were 'capital' items and the LOX was 'revenue' and they had spent their 'capital' budget...

Plus of course you have to spend your budget before the end of the fiscal year, or lose it.

Wall meet urine.

I am sure that this happens all the time across the entire multi-verse.

So that’s alright then

DP

Mitch said...

Just shows you how useless "management" can be.
Arbitrary rules based on squat followed off a cliff.

Where I work a "directum" has to approve all spending above a certain figure(very low) daft cunt now does nowt except tick boxes based on whatever "rule" tickles his fancy.
The dole Que beckons I think.

Roger Thornhill said...

Everyone makes mistakes.

The problem is, the State forces us all to share in them or go to gaol.