I have seen the exact same bahavior ("get all-new furniture at the end of every fiscal year, because if they manage to come in under budget, their budget gets cut in the next year, so they make sure to come out over-budget") occurring in large multinational corporate companies, where individual departments are very, very away from the top decisionmakers and spend a majority of their effort on budgets and infighting, and not on company results.

It's not a symptom of public vs private, it's a symptom of lack of oversight, agency problem, and 'too big to manage' problems.