While taxpayers continue to worry about soaring gas prices, home ownership, and rising food and tax costs, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) has prematurely paid taxpayer dollars for vans that are sitting idle because there is no clear plan to equip them for their intended purposes. Consequently, CHP has wasted an enormous amount of taxpayer dollars that could have been spent on improving roads, providing water storage, or actually fighting crime.
According to the (Sacramento Bee, September 21, 2007), “’The California Highway Patrol wasted almost $1 million in taxpayer money by buying 51 vehicles that went mostly unused for more than two years,’ State Auditor Elaine Howle said in an audit released Thursday.”
“Howle’s review found that 46 of the 51 vans, most of them intended for the CHP’s truck inspection operation, sat almost entirely idle, parked on CHP property in an outdoor location….As of April, those vans had been driven only 401 miles – an average of nine miles per van….”
“’The CHP hadn’t worked out a plan for equipping the vans before buying them, Howle said’”
The auditor expressed dismay about the CHP’s actions, “We felt it wasn’t necessarily a prudent purchase to make….” She went on to say, “We have concerns about the waste of state money when that money could have maybe been used for other purposes.”
The audit also pointed out, “[A] group that was responsible for coming up with a way to equip the new vans did not hold its first meeting until after the CHP got its first shipment.” And, the CHP, “could have waited to purchase the vans until nearer the time it expected to actually use them.”
Moreover, “[i]f the money instead had been left in the state treasury, the report says, it would have earned more than $90,000 in interest.” It is an outrage that the CHP would allow this situation to occur and make no effort to rectify it. This recent boondoggle by the CHP makes one wonder how many other wasteful circumstances are occurring within that organization?
It is unacceptable for thousands of taxpayer dollars to be thrown away due to ineptness and scant oversight. Taxpayers deserve a budget process that gives the public confidence that spending is well managed. This process should systematically review spending programs and measure their cost-effectiveness and performance in order to assure taxpayers that wasteful spending has been rooted out.
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