In private businesses, big and small decisions are made much quicker than in government. The management team makes a presentation to the board of directors and action is taken.
In government, it can either be the professional staff or a group of “concerned citizens” that approach the elected officials, who then discuss the issue, sometimes for many months, until they finally decide what to do. This after taking the original idea and slicing, dicing, mutilating, and modifying it until it barely represents the initial thought.
In business, when an idea fails it is the investors that lose, and if it’s a costly failure, the board of directors and most likely the originator of the idea are replaced. Examples of this are reported regularly in business-oriented news outlets.
In government, there is rarely any accountability for delays, cost overruns, or failures, big or small.
One example of a mega-mistake I am very familiar with was the construction of the space shuttle launch site at the nearby Vandenberg Space Force Base. The Air Force had decided that it needed a West Coast launch facility, and NASA needed a fourth orbiter to add to the fleet but didn’t have funding for it.
So, the Air Force would fund the fourth orbiter and build the new launch site on the abandoned manned orbiter launch site and construct new post-launch processing facilities near the main runways.
It would take many years and hundreds of millions of tax dollars to accomplish. It all started with several meetings to determine the scope of the project; the military needed to define mission objectives so they could prepare a budget.
The first mistake was determining how many launches a year would eventually occur. In government, the bigger the idea the bigger the budget is. A big budget means more colonels and generals would be needed to oversee the effort. They finally decided that they would launch every 14 days—that decision didn’t consider the operational reality of the months-long process needed to refurbish an orbiter for another flight.
I worked for a contractor during the construction and site activation phase of the project.
What I observed were many bad decisions that resulted in the loss of hundreds of millions of tax dollars. One small example was a grading project at the launch site. During the early stages of construction, several rainy days created mud and debris flows that impacted the area.
A project was developed to provide better drainage; the cost was around $50,000. A newly assigned lieutenant was tasked to find cost savings, as the total project was way over budget and savings were needed. He canceled the grading project, thus saving the $50,000—he was a hero!
Later, another storm brought a torrent of mud and debris onto the launch site, again causing significant damage to the mobile service tower. The cost to repair the damage and complete the drainage project exceeded $500,000. By then another officer was charged with fixing the problem, and he also became a hero for “saving the program.”
The biggest problem was the decision to try and launch from Vandenberg. The space shuttle system was very heavy—it was designed to be launched from Kennedy Space Center where the Earth’s rotation assists in lifting it into orbit.
At Vandenberg, the launch path is a polar orbit, and without the assistance of the Earth’s rotation all that could be launched was an orbiter minus a payload; despite this fact, the Air Force management team continued the project hoping that they could somehow overcome the launch weight issue in time for the first mission.
When the orbiter Challenger exploded, the Air Force finally concluded that it had made a mega-mistake, and the Vandenberg project was canceled. Although many system parts were salvaged and shipped to Kennedy Space Center as replacement parts, the total loss was in the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
And although many active-duty military and government employees were promoted during the nearly 10 years to build, partially activate, and then shut down the project, no one was held accountable for this enormous waste of time and resources.
Waste, reckless spending, and sometimes fraud exists at every level of government without any accountability for failure. This means that government efficiency is an oxymoron, and so far no one has been able to fix it.
There are numerous examples like this; thus, the government is neither expedient, efficient, nor cost conscious.
Maybe it’s time for a cultural change in how the government, at all levels, is run.
Ron Fink writes to the Sun from Lompoc. Send a letter for publication to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 3-13, 2025.