A warehouse maintained by contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency contained secret rooms full of exercise equipment, televisions and couches, according to an internal audit.
EPA’s inspector general found contractors used partitions, screens and piled up boxes to hide the rooms from security cameras in the 70,000 square-foot building located in Landover, Md. The warehouse — used for inventory storage — is owned by the General Services Administration and leased to the EPA for about $750,000 per year.
The EPA has issued a stop work order to Apex Logistics LLC, the responsible contractor, ensuring the company’s workers no longer have access to the site — EPA security officials escorted contractor personnel off the premises on May 17 — and ending all payments on the contract.
Since awarding the contract in May 2007, EPA has paid Apex Logistics about $5.3 million, most of which went to labor costs. Conditions at the facility “raise questions about time charges made by warehouse employees under the contract,” the report said.
“The warehouse contained multiple unauthorized and hidden personal spaces created by and for the workers that included televisions, refrigerators, radios, microwaves, chairs and couches,” the IG report said. “These spaces contained personal items, including photos, pin ups, calendars, clothing, books, magazines and videos.”
Party Poopers.
It’ll just become another expensive failure that will be attributed to the previous resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. No surprise there, and also none that Biden’s immediate superior never heard of it, until it showed up in the news.
‘Tis odd, however, that there are so many “surprises” that are regularly floating to the surface, mit über stink, during the term of our current so-called POTUS….
Both previous and current Administrations are guilty of the main underlying cause of all recently revealed issues (as well as certainty of similar widespread other issues which are temporarily obscured): growing Government too large, giving it too much power and giving it tasks beyond small Constitutional set (empowering that Big and Powerful Government). Do that and IRS, spying, foreign disasters, waste, fraud, abuse,… are inevitable. Such problem must happen and happen a lot. The only solution is forcing a shrink down in size, power and duties of the Government. Severe shrink-down. Poor, weak Government entrusted with limited tasks simply lacks ability to mess up much.
This has dick all to do with either two termer…
Parties don’t matter either, in case you hadn’t noticed.
What matters is that contractors try to get away with this kind of shit, (stealing time, money or resources, over billing and under performing,) and our gum’mint is always too slack, or broke, or busy (bwahaha) to mind the friggin’ store.
Either way, we always get stuck with the tab.
Agreed, workers need to warm their Mac & cheese before consumption and catch a baseball game during break time. It’s American as apple pie.
Say it Ain’t So, Guse!
A capitalist enterprise without any quality control, hum ’Who’d have thunk it’.
I thought a Quality Control Plan (QCP) is a requirement document in U.S. government contracts?
Makes you wonder about the quality of the government contract and or the ability the government to administer it.
At least having key element(s) needed in any successful outsourcing, a QC process that includes the government conducting on-site unannounced inspections periodically.
Supposedly there are Government Property Inspectors and Investigators that investigate/inspect government property to ensure compliance with contract agreements and government regulations. But who knows with the sequestration B.S.
Quality control went the way of the dodo after the completion of the Polaris missile project.
Everything has been late and cost too much ever since.
William Deming had given up on this country and gone to Japan about the time that the very notion of quality had been snuffed out, back in the ‘fifties.
He came back but he never accomplished in the states what had in Japan.
Suzuki bikes sold and Harley-Davidson bikes just leaked all over the show room floors.
Honda cars sold while Fords just got dustier on the lot.
Apex Logistics resembles a Google office complex.
It sounds like Tony Soprano had something to do with this.
Could it be real life imitating fiction? Or is it a case of fiction inspiring real life? Either way, only a fool would say he/she was surprised. About the only surprising thing might be why there wasn’t a politician or two involved with a sex scandal in one of those rooms. (I gotta wonder if we’re being told the whole story here.)
This is sounds interesting! But this is bullshit! Imagine how they hide those things without knowing someone. I think that should be illegal! I hope they should do something with this mess!
And nobody in this administration or the EPA will be held accountable for anything because it is their God given right to be paid big bucks for doing the most piss poor job imaginable. The EPA should never have owned a lot of what was there. Most of the rest should have been recycled.
No I’m not saying the President meant this to happen any more than he meant Benghazi to happen. It’s just a simple fact that when you’ve have an ivory tower academic ideology who doesn’t do reality and does politics by Chicago rules in charge for a while this sort of crap is going to become the norm.
He’s got all the answers in theory but he can’t fix a faucet in practice nor do his followers play by the rules. Wait till Obama care starts to kick in if you want to see the mother of all train wrecks or get an honest educated evaluation of where we actually stand in the middle east. Nobody trusts us and nobody likes use because we can’t be trusted and the fantasy world views of this progressive government make it the natural enemy of everybody in the middle east.
70 000 square feet; that’s about 1.6 acres or 13 football fields. Big place.
None of this concerns me as much as this paragraph from the original article:
—–
In addition to the secret rooms, the IG found an incomplete and inaccurate recordkeeping system; numerous potential security and safety hazards, including an open box of passports; and “deplorable conditions” — such as corrosion, vermin feces and “pervasive” mold.
—–
What the heck is an EPA warehouse doing with “an open box of passports”?
70 000 square feet leased for $ 750 000/year comes to about $10.71/sq.ft. Does that seem a little high, even in the D.C. area? The payments to the logistics company amount to about $880 000/year. I wish the article had mentioned just how many people worked there.
One poster said what’s needed is on-site inspections; I’d like to point out that’s exactly what brought this to light, although I don’t know if it was the first such in the six years the place was in operation.
“televisions, refrigerators, radios, microwaves, chairs and couches,” the IG report said. “These spaces contained personal items, including photos, pin ups, calendars, clothing, books, magazines and videos.”
Sounds like a break room. Many employers have break rooms and fitness rooms for employees to use during there breaks. Were these especially lavish? My company has a break room with couches, refrigerators, microwaves, and chairs. We don’t have a gym, but I’ve worked at places that do have gyms. Not seeing the problem unless these break rooms were especially lavish.
Here is what I do have a problem with: “In addition to the secret rooms, the IG found an incomplete and inaccurate recordkeeping system; numerous potential security and safety hazards, including an open box of passports; and “deplorable conditions” — such as corrosion, vermin feces and “pervasive” mold.”
The first rule of Man Cave, is nobody talks about Man Cave. 🙂
First the IRS gets called for wasting money on in-house Star Trek theatrical productions. And other elaborate “training” plays. Plus lavish banquets, etc.
And now we hear that the GSA and EPA have permitted a contractor to set up a cozy “man cave” (or caves) inside a warehouse. What other agencies are directly or indirectly wasting tax money on high living. we haven’t heard about yet. And why are they only being exposed during the Obama administrations? When we can be pretty sure this waste has been going on for more than six years. The Bush administration just hid it better. As if, only the “black man’s” administration has ever wasted money. Sure!
EPA is just mad that they did not think of it first.
Adam Curry should check this story out. Because it sounds like another creative use of those large metal shipping containers.