To be honest, as someone who lives in New York, that doesn't even sound that bad, as far as corruption in government contract goes.
To give you an idea, the MTA was recently caught paying $200,000 per day to people who literally did not have any jobs to do[0]. They were able to cover this up for years, and when it was finally made public, nobody batted an eyelid because, well, this level of corruption and wasteful spending is so commonplace that nobody was surprised in the least.
Hopefully Nevada has a functioning democratic government (unlike New York) and the state government decides to hold these people accountable. It's been over a month since that NYTimes piece came out, and Governor Cuomo hasn't even felt the need to respond to it - that's how little accountability our elected officials here have.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
> The labor deals negotiated between the unions and construction companies also ensure that workers are well paid. The agreement for Local 147, the union for the famed “sandhogs” who dig the tunnels, includes a pay rate for most members of $111 per hour in salary and benefits. The pay doubles for overtime or Sunday work, which is common in transit construction. Weekend overtime pays quadruple — more than $400 per hour.
Wow. Seems like programming isn't a good field if you're in it for the money. The base pay may not be far off if you're a big shot superstar in a small market or normal in SV, but which of us gets 4x salary for weekend hours?
See the problem?
Represent.Us has been focusing on passing state level anticorruption acts until we fix congress enough to pass federal ones. To show just how corrupt things are, they got one passed in South Dakota and the powers turned around and did this https://www.salon.com/2017/01/25/south-dakota-republicans-st...
Personally I have spent a long time thinking about these issues and I think at the federal level both parties are so corrupt that my 2020 campaign will be based on taking the majority away from both parties, and uniting independents, libertarians, constitutionalists, the green, and other parties under a coalition dedicated to actually representing their constituents.
New York doesn't have ballot initiatives like some states do. Constitutional amendments have to be proposed by the legislature, and they're going to be pretty unlikely to vote to take away their own power.
In the not-so-distant past, there was a pretty successful initiative where people would occasionally end the lives of people who blatantly stole from them, or egregiously misrepresented them, while holding a position in representative government.
Politicians in safe seats are theoretically accountable but due to the partisan nature of the electorate can in reality do whatever they like. Regardless of how badly they perform, they or their allies will always get re-elected.
In the UK there are some seats like that and they're usually associated with the most hilariously incompetent politicians. Diane Abbott became famous in the last couple of years for all sorts of useless and bad behaviour, like this famous exchange in which she went on the radio to explain a new policy of hiring more police, but repeatedly gave nonsensical and inconsistent numbers for how many and how much it'd cost:
http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/diane-abb...
e.g. she claimed hiring 10,000 police would cost only 300,000 pounds and when it was pointed out that'd mean paying them 30 pounds a year, she just invented another number on the spot that was also an order of magnitude away from anything that could possibly be correct.
She also routinely posts racist and sexist stuff on Twitter, skips important votes and generally fails at basic politics but her share of the vote went up in the election - because she's Labour.
No competition? No accountability!
Er, what? That's not really true. Bloomberg was an independent and his predecessor was Giuliani.
Over the last 40 years, the mayor has been a democrat less than half the time (18 years over Koch, Dinkins, and now de Blasio).
GP isn't quite right that New York is a single-party state, but he is right that most districts aren't at all competitive. There are certain districts that are deemed Democratic territory and others that are Republican territory, and the two parties have gentleman's agreements with each other not to compete in each other's turf.
That's pretty hard to infer given the context, since the MTA is controlled by both the city and the state.
> but he is right that most districts aren't at all competitive
This is also true of say, Georgia. You can see for example that no one even ran against Buddy Carter in 2016 [1]. Most districts, period, aren't really that competitive.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia%27s_1st_congressional_...
Not really - the MTA is a private entity which receives the bulk of its funding from the state, and the state government is (ostensibly) responsible for holding it accountable.
> This is also true of say, Georgia. You can see for example that no one even ran against Buddy Carter in 2016 [1]. Most districts, period, aren't really that competitive.
New York is a special case in the degree to which both parties collude to keep districts non-competitive for general elections, how they ensure that even primary elections are non-competitive[0], and the number of state laws that they have passed in order to shield this power from being checked by voters at any step.
I don't really want to get too into the details here, because it's tangential to the original topic, but it's been discussed on HN before.
[0] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/nyregion/new-york-poli...
That's not really true. The biggest source of funding for the MTA is fares, followed closely by dedicated taxes (i.e. there would be no reason for the taxes to exist were it not specifically for the MTA). A majority of those taxes are levied specifically on people who live in the MTA's core area (basically counties surrounding and including the city) [1].
The state actually dips into these dedicated taxes to cover other budget shortfalls.
You make it sound as though the state covers for the MTA using the general tax pool, which is such a minor part of the MTA's budget (through subsidies largely) as to be not meaningful.
> the state government is (ostensibly) responsible for holding it accountable.
No, the board is. The governor appoints 6 board members, the city 4, and the other 7 are delegates from various counties throughout the state.
> New York is a special case
Special case according to whom? Georgia rated 3rd-to-last on Ballotpedia's "competitiveness index" for the 2016 election cycle [2]. If your argument is that:
1) New York overtly colludes to remain uncompetitive
2) Georgia doesn't
3) George still manages to hold less competitive elections than New York
then I think a logical conclusion is one of:
1) Georgia legislators collude but less overtly
2) There's less transparency about the collusion in Georgia
3) Collusion clearly isn't as large a factor in uncompetitive elections as other factors
1: http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding
2: https://ballotpedia.org/2016_state_legislative_elections_ana...
NY has long been a NYC/everything else split. As home prices rose and blue collar workers got priced out of LI, it too is lumping in with NYC as a Dem block. Between the two they way outvote in statewide elections.
Upstate is mainly Repub with a few blue areas.
GA was Dem for years until the mid-90's. Even the Dems were fairly conservative (remember Zell Miller's "My party left me" comments) and since taking control of statewide and anything other than ATL and Macon proper they have gerrymandered districts to the point of there is no way the Democrats could take back either of the legislative bodies.
TL;DL NY has been like this a long time. Albany has played the game for centuries. GA is just learning.
New York election law has been engineered to the point where it's actually impossible for voters to have any influence on the outcome. (That's why New York perennially has the lowest election turnout in the country).
Even our primary elections are essentially coronations for the candidates that the parties themselves hand-pick[0], with no real way for voters to override that choice. That's just one law, and if it were only that one, it might not be such a problem, but it's part of a carefully-constructed system that leaves New York residents with truly no control over our government.
[0] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/nyregion/new-york-poli...
That’s an extraordinary claim. You’re essentially arguing that democracy has failed in New York and that there was some conspiracy to undermine it.
I only skimmed but your linked article seems to focus on filling vacancies in the middle of a term.
Has NY done anything to prevent candidates from getting on the ballot in regular elections?
Nothing against Indians as a people, but Indian outsourcing companies are known for the terrible product quality.
Recently our government outsourced some naval ship building outside the country at the last moment after having expressed they were going to have them locally built. The reason for the switch was cost. To shave a million or two off the price of a many hundred million dollar project they decided to completely remove our local economy from the benefactors.
Private projects? Do what you like. Global times. But a governments role is to grow the economy and welfare of its people, public works are excellent ways to stimulate that.
Now, imagine if the faculty president thought "hmm, I bet we can save a bunch if we do remote teaching. We'll get super large interactive displays in every classroom and we'll have faculty in [some country] teach our students. We'll save millions!"
[1]http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/UCSF-to-outsource...
Slippery slope, if you outsource/fully digitize the teachers...administration comes next.
All the Beltway Bandits (DC consulting companies) know how to play the game, to what degree they play it is the only question. It's unfortunate that they game the system but the rules are set up to encourage it.
For a longer argument, see Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations).
For one-off projects, all you're doing is spending a bunch of money training people, who will then mostly likely move to places where there are long-term jobs.
Investing in the creation of new industries might be a good endeavor for a government, but it should be dictated by a strategy, not by its occasional needs.
We also have a local train manufacturing industry. But end up buying from China...
This tells me everything. In my experience nothing turns a project into a slow moving trainwreck more quickly than poor communication. The ambiguity and confusion it creates saps all morale and clarity of purpose out of everyone.
http://purchasing.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/purchasingnvgov/conte...
They want something "cloud ready" yet acquired $600,000 of Oracle cloud licenses (what ever that is)?
"The Department purchased and received Oracle hardware, Oracle Software, Network and security Hardware and Software, and the Oracle Cloud Software. The hardware is located in both the Department's Carson City and Las Vegas (Flamingo) server rooms. To-date, the purchase cost for hardware and software is $11,408,412.
The cost breakdown is as follows: 1. Oracle Hardware - $3,000,000 2. Oracle Software - $5,900,000 3. Oracle Cloud Subscription - $618,000 4. Security-Network software and hardware - $1,890,412
Total Costs $11,408,412"
http://budget.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/budgetnvgov/content/Meeti...
Page 262. "This is a new contract to provide, design and implement a new system to replace the existing and aging client server application. The modernization of the current system will provide better customer service, reduce transaction processing time, increase speed-to-market of NV DMV products and services, enhance security and reduce system backlog"
Very clever choice of words. I'll bet the board who approved that contract didn't know they signed a contract for nothing.
From their own site:
https://www.techmahindra.com/media/press_releases/TechMahind...
"The solution will be migrated to the Oracle technology stack"
So they are going to migrate 4 years worth of Dynamics customizations (which aren't even working) to the Oracle technology stack. Right. No shit they didn't even show up.
Chatting with a former coworker and apparently Oracle has their own (dysfunctional) cloud offering these days.
http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-customer-explains-audi...
Quote from the article:
Oracle has been threatening customers with big bills for software they're using but it says they haven't properly paid for, Craig Guarente, CEO of Oracle asset-management consultant Palisade Compliance, previously told Business Insider.
Then Oracle makes the threat go away if the customer buys credits for cloud services, according to the consultant's description of the tactic.
They promise to cut your Amazon bill in half. I guess they have scissors.
I think that's right. I keep getting emails from Oracle sales claiming they are going to save me tons of money if I move my cloud to workload to them. When has Oracle ever saved someone money?
This one is extra bad. Not even a communication plan? They did manage to spend $13 MILLION on Oracle shit though. The best part is the solution they sold, which is not even working in New Hampshire, and was built on DynamicsCRM (not portable to oracle)
The grand finale:
"The contract was amended in February 2017, which extended the termination date for an additional year for maintenance coverage. It also increased the maximum amount of the contract by $3 million, primarily for additional hardware and software."
That person needs to be fired immediately and probably arrested.