US Government Mismanagement Hits Close To North Dakota

As reported on two of our local television stations yesterday, building of the new multimillion dollar border facility at Portal has been halted. After spending almost ten million dollars out of a proposed 28 million dollar budget, they halted the project. Why? The only explanation given so far is that “There’s a problem with the road as it enters the port.”
In other words, somebody didn’t know how to use a transit and survey the site to take accurate measurements.
How much more will this end up costing US taxpayers? And why did the Department of Homeland Security think this project was justified anyway? Moreover, why is it that the contractor they hired, (Alutiiq, an Alaskan contracting firm), has not paid any of its subcontractors?
You might remember that our very own Senator Dorgan made a great stink last September asking Janet Napolitano to review the Homeland Security process of selecting projects and awarding bids. However, as usual the issue quickly faded away and we never heard another word about the issue.
I know that Senator Dorgan is probably on the downhill coast since announcing his retirement, but why is he not all over this issue? Or why is our infamous “budget hawk” Senator Kent Conrad not jumping all over this?
They want the government to run a national health care program costing trillions of dollars when they can’t even run a 28 million dollar construction project. Go figure.