M.T.A.'s Lack Of Leadership Delays 2nd Ave. Subway Yet Again

As of late much of the blame for the M.T.A.'s woes have been directed at the State Senate, and rightly so. However, when it comes to the completion of the Second Avenue subway line the fingers are being pointed squarely in the direction of the transit authority's management. It appears that division that oversees capital projects can't get their act together on a subway line that was originally planned for eighty years ago.

From The NY Daily News:

The MTA, which has pushed back the completion date several times over the last decade, recently predicted additional construction and design delays totaling 18 months, an internal document drafted in February reveals.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's handling of some aspects of its major construction projects has frustrated the Federal Transit Administration, The News has learned.

After extending the Second Ave. subway schedule in March 2008, citing higher than anticipated construction costs, the MTA was required to give the feds a recovery plan with options to make up some lost time and fill budget gaps.

The feds have "provided the MTA with a time period that is more than reasonable" regional administrator Brigid Hynes-Cherin wrote to the MTA in November. "Unfortunately, the MTA appears to have been caught up in a never-ending process of evaluating and reevaluating each program. The time for evaluation has taken far too long, and the time for presenting a recovery plan is now long overdue."

Supposedly this plan will be done in a couple weeks, but who knows if it will be comprehensive or meet the federal government's standards. The only thing about this project the authority has been good at is to promote the T line, though their ads about the first segment being done in 2015 have not-unexpectantly disappeared.

It really is sad to see that in the preeminent city in the United States, it takes a century (probably more though) to build a subway line, where in other countries entire systems are completed within a few years and with much higher quality.

FBI Lost Another 320 Laptops/Weapons

I am really getting sick of hearing about the rampant corruption and incompetence in our government run by the Bush Administration. There have been countless stories of terrible mismanagement and here we have yet another inside the governmental bureaucracy of the FBI.

In August of 2002 a Department of Justice report found hundreds of laptops and weapons either lost or stolen over the course of the prior 28 months. Well in the last three years and eight months they lost an additional 160 laptops and 160 weapons. Some of those laptops had confidential information including details of FBI personnel in counter-terrorism and other divisions.

From Reuters:

The 160 missing weapons and 160 laptops disappeared during the 44 months that ended on September 30, 2005. At least 10 laptops contained sensitive or classified information, including one with personal identifying information on FBI personnel.

The FBI could not determine whether an additional 50 missing laptops contained sensitive or classified information. Seven of those were assigned to the counter-intelligence or counter-terrorism divisions, which handle sensitive national security information.

The gross mismanagement and utter carelessness of important documentation must end. It is bad enough that the 2002 report disclosed the loss of several hundred laptops and weapons, the fact that this is still occurring is maddening. Despite the DoJ setting up a system to facilitate the whereabouts of such items, reports were turned in late.

The FBI did an assessment in the case of only a few of the missing laptops to determine the possible damage to its operations and national security, the report said.

It found the bureau did not adequately document its disposal of excess laptops and hard drives to ensure that sensitive or classified information had been erased. The report also found that the FBI failed to consistently ensure departing employees returned weapons and laptops.

Now there is no way to ascertain what information was on those hard drives. The article reports that 10 of the 160 laptops had classified data on them, though there could be an additional 51 systems with sensitive information. The FBI claims 43 of those did not have classified information, but who can really know for sure as their accounting procedures are obviously in the gutter.