Accountability & the Silver Spring Transit Center

Accountability?

What we know:

1. In 1993 Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan declared publicly that the $20 million Silver Spring Transit Center will be complete in 1998. 

   

   This is taken from a presentation that Ed Blansitt, Montgomery County Inspector General, gave on September 3, 2014 to the annual conference of the Federal Audit Executive Committee (FAEC), Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria VA.
2. The SSTC is seriously flawed. A structural evaluation report (commissioned by Montgomery County, performed by KCE Structural Engineers, and made public in March 2013) documents serious design, construction and inspection/testing flaws in the over budget, overdue, $120+ million SSTC. 
   
3. The March 2013 report blames the SSTC's numerous flaws on "errors and omissions" committed by the SSTC's design engineer, Parsons Brinkerhoff, the builder/contractor, Foulger Pratt, and the concrete testing/inspection firm and special quality inspector, Balter Co.
4. Montgomery County noncompetitively selected (public-private partnership) Parsons Brinkerhoff, Foulger Pratt and Balter Co. for the project.
5. Montgomery County served as construction manager for the project, including a fulltime team of County employees on site during construction.
6. The SSTC is presently being "repaired". These repairs include adding reinforcement where there was none, adding a 2-inch modified concrete overlay to elevated decks, and reinforcing 250+ beams.
7. The opening date, final cost and extraordinary costs for operation and maintenance of the SSTC, because of its flaws, are unknown.
8. So far, the public has borne all of the ballooning costs for the SSTC, including "repair" costs, consultant fees, etc.
9. Funding for the SSTC is 53% federal, 11% state (MD) and 36% local (Montgomery County).

For all we know, the public will end up eating all of the extra costs for the SSTC. No person or persons from Montgomery County, Maryland Transit Administration, Federal Transit Administration, Foulger Pratt, Parsons Brinkerhoff or Balter Co. have taken responsibility for the increased costs, including "repair" costs.

It appears that the current County executive will be reelected on Tuesday, Nov. 4. Why not? By their votes and by their silence Montgomery County, Maryland and US citizens have shown that they're OK with unaccountability for those responsible for poor public works' management, design, construction, concrete inspection and testing, quality control, and the outrageous delays and cost overruns that they produce.

Political commercials on TV feature teachers complaining that more money needs to go towards education. Perhaps they're right. I wonder if they and voters have considered that the tens of millions of dollars wasted on the lemon SSTC could have been better spent on education. Have they also considered that lack of accountability produces such waste?

Face it. There is no accountability in government.
Who's to blame? taxpayers/voters/people who don't vote. We are.
Face it, folks. If we keep voting in folks who waste the public's $, then what are they to think? Answer: It's OK to waste the public's $.
So, you get more of what you ask for.
Bring on the Purple Line public-private partnership! Waste more of the public's $! Apparently, we like it.

Silver Spring Transit Center