Washington Times
August 28, 1991, Wednesday, Final Edition
Car 54, where are you?
SECTION: Part G; COMMENTARY; EDITORIAL; Pg. G2
If you thought Fairfax County's four-chopper air cavalry
division was a good story, get a load of yet another little item, this one
uncovered by Thomas Heath of The Washington Post: "More than $1 million
worth of brand new Fairfax County police cars are sitting unused on a fenced
grassy lot, their batteries disconnected, purchased because officials wrongly
believed the big sedans they favor would no longer be manufactured."
Naturally, piecing together a story that lays blame for
wasting a million dollars is a tough job, but Mr. Heath seems to have uncovered
all the taxpayers need to know.
* At a cost of $3.2 million, the county bought twice as many
cars as it needed, which will continue depreciating and deteriorating until the
police can use them.
* Like many of the decisions that went into buying the
elaborate furnishings of the government center, including $4 million worth of
new furniture, this one was made because county officials simply didn't know what
they were doing. When county officials found out the Ford Crown Victoria they
purchase for police duty would undergo a design change and be unavailable in
the near future, they asked Chevrolet what it could offer. County officials
claim that Chevrolet said it was downsizing its police model, so they decided
to buy twice as many Fords. Chevrolet says the company never had plans to
downsize its car, which costs $530 less than the Ford. * "No analysis was
done to determine the cost of maintaining the cars or how much money the county
would lose by not earning interest on more than $1 million." As the Republican nominee for county
supervisor, Tom Davis, noted, "This is just another example of lack of
appropriate oversight by elected officials and the delegation to county staff
of wide spending discretion." Whether Mr. Davis is including himself in
that group we don't know, but his point is well taken. A helicopter fleet
costing $4,000 a day. Millions in new furniture costs. Granite flooring and
mahogany paneling in the government center. A fitness room with thousands of
dollars worth of equipment. A $96,000 television system. A $37,000 granite
conference table. Exotic pine trees costing $4,000 apiece. All of which cost
more than $100 million (the lion's share of it going to the new government
center), a figure that approximates the deficit the county faces next year.
With the approval of the Board of Supervisors, Fairfax County's top-level
bureaucrats have spent the Moore years building an empire with taxpayer money.
Come November, the taxpayers should act accordingly.