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Auditors question $175 million in unresolved Yucca Mountain costs
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STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- As the Department of Energy seeks to close its books on the Yucca Mountain program, auditors on Monday said they identified more than $175 million in unresolved charges claimed by contractors.
DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman said some of the cost issues date back to 2002, a year after Bechtel SAIC Corp. took over as managing contractor at the nuclear waste site. The Bechtel SAIC management contract expired in March 2009. DOE switched operators then to USA Repository Services.
Now that DOE is moving quickly to terminate the Nevada project, Friedman urged settlement of all the financial loose ends on the $10 billion endeavor.
"The department needs to ensure that the close out process is managed effectively and that all disallowed costs are settled and funds recouped; the remaining required audits of costs incurred are completed, and that all excess funds are de-obligated," the inspector general said in a companion report on July 23.
It was not the first time the inspector general had questioned financial management on the Yucca project. DOE is awaiting completion of three Defense Department audits on allowable charges raised by federal inspectors in 2005.
In response to the inspector general's latest report, DOE said it was reviewing contracts and would seek reimbursement on whatever costs are disallowed.
In the new report, inspectors said $18.8 million of submitted charges from Bechtel SAIC were questioned by the firm's own auditors but never were resolved with DOE. They included unsupported labor and travel expenses, improper automobile lease payments and the payment of an employee's apartment lease cancellation fee . Bechtel SAIC did not audit about $160 million in charges submitted by subcontractors, inspectors said. They identified 23 subcontracts for fiscal years 2004 through 2009 for which they could find no evidence of audit.
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Hours after her most recent failed interview, Sharron Angle is buffing up her communications team by soliciting an experienced, ultra-right-wing mechanic in a desperate attempt to help steady her ridiculously shaky campaign.
The most popular Tea Bag of all continued her brand of insane remarks when she told Fox News on Monday night that she wanted the press to ask her only questions she wants to answer. By Tuesday afternoon, the National Republican Senatorial Committee was alerting reporters that Angle had a new communications director on her team.
Whether Angle's new mechanic can extricate her from her self-dug hole is an open question. To date, the Nevada Republican has either run (literally) from the press or approached outlets as if their chief purpose was to help convey her campaign message. In the process, she's accumulated an immense amount of distrust from the press and everyone else.
On Tuesday, CNN's Rick Sanchez said: "I'm sorry, but in all my years in journalism school, University of Minnesota, I never had one professor tell me that my job when I graduated was to go out there and help certain politicians get support or get elected and only ask them the questions that they want to be asked," Sanchez said.
Someone check Harry Reid's or Bob Loux pockets. Think they got caught once already stealing funds!
I said it before and I'll say it again; you can't trust private businesses to do the right thing. Enough thieving all ready, get their butts OUT.
Is it fair to assume that those contractor folks that could answer the auditor's questions have already found other jobs, were fired and went their own way, or otherwise retired? Also, weren't all the records haphazardly disposed of or otherwise almost impossible to retrieve in a bid to make Yucca `appear' to go away?
I doubt Congress will get anything done prior to the mid-term elections, let alone cancel the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Sounds like the political games will be costing taxpayers some part of this $175M. Most of the costs were probably legit, but the unallowable costs probably can't be proved if the DOE can't dig up the records and the contractors can claim that the DOE forced them to get rid of the accounting folks with the answers.
Worked for Bechtel forever. Traveled for 22 years. Most supervisory types stayed in motels. I always got an apartment. They would pay all the bills from utilities to cable w/porn, deposits, and of course the rent. It was actually much cheaper per month than a Residence Inn type place.
Hey, we got the job done on time and budget. Yucca is a wasted money disaster, and I'm not surprised that now, at the sorry end of the project, auditors are asking questions. Would have gone on ad infinitum if the project had continued-it's called "government work". A gravy train if there ever was one.
Thank you, Bechtel.