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Bungling Bureaucrats

Entry 2238, on 2022-09-17 at 20:32:48 (Rating 4, News)

After over 2000 blog posts, during which time I have asked several people to write a "guest contributor" article, I have finally got one to share. This was originally a letter to the editor of our local paper, the Otago Daily Times, but some parts were left out (see if you can guess what) so I thought it might be worth also including it here, with the permission of the writer. So here it is...

Dear Sir,

After stripping the protective Harvey Norman wrapper (and placing it in the waste paper bin where it belongs) from your Saturday edition, I was left with a single sheet of news print as your leader page, (a page that could have easily been misplaced) and low and behold found there was a very important item on it. "Cost cuts threat to hospital".

Apparently the projected costs are over budget, and the Ministry of Health is desperately trying to keep the project close to budget. What a surprise. This presumably is the same bunch of bungling bureaucrats that for years have been unable to accurately assess the expenditure required by the old Health Boards to provide health services. How can they be expected all of a sudden to be able to accurately forecast the cost of a new hospital?

Their answer now of course is not to see how they can provide as economically as possible the size of the hospital they have presumably forecast as being required for the area, but no, the answer apparently is to down-size the hospital and reduce its capacity to provide services.

The hospital is in my opinion already 10 years too late in being provided, is probably going to take 10 years too long to build, and will end up being 10 times too small to provide the services for an expanding population when it is completed.

Where health is concerned cost should not be a consideration. We all saw how billions were there to be used when the Covid epidemic surfaced, and were assured that there was still plenty in reserve if extra finance was needed. Well it is needed now.

This should mean that rather than building to the original plan for the hospital, it should be upsized. It will never ever be cheaper to construct than now, and with the new expanded bureaucratic health operating system put in place by the Government (possibly at the suggestion of the existing bureaucrats themselves) it is unlikely the southern regions hospital health needs will again be considered for expansion or upgrading in the next 100 years.

It is essential therefore that at the very least the new hospital should be built to the full original specifications, which will hopefully be sufficient to provide the services the region requires over the next 25 to 50 years.

That's it, so I will now have to add a few comments - of course; are you surprised?

First, the writer is an accountant, so I was quite surprised with this comment: "where health is concerned cost should not be a consideration". Even I realise that cost is always a consideration, although I agree with the underlying idea that we waste a lot of money on useless projects and far more should be spent on health.

Second, the vast amounts of money spent on the pandemic - or more accurately spent on correcting the issues caused by the government's response to the pandemic - could have been spent on the health system, including on our new building. But this government is only good for throwing money at poorly considered projects, so we go that instead.

Third, this hospital project has been in the planning stage for a ridiculous amount of time. I have no idea what the bureaucrats involved have been doing, but it has undoubtedly cost a lot, which could have gone towards the project itself.

Finally, I would like to congratulate the writer on the use of the word "bureaucrat" three times, including using "bungling bureaucrats" once. Readers might have noticed I quite like using this word myself!

Anyway, if you enjoyed this post and would like to write one yourself, just write it and send it to me (email to ojb@mac.com). You can be published here either with your real name or anonymously.

Comment 1 (7302) by Derek Ramsey on 2022-09-18 at 22:09:54:

OJB said: "Even I realise that cost is always a consideration"

Not for government bureaucracy.

The township I live in owns dump trucks. With fuel prices through the roof, it is expensive to drive those around. Do you think that for one second they ask if whatever projects they drive it around for are necessary given the cost to taxpayers for fuel? Meanwhile, farmers always consider whether or not it is worth harvesting their fields because the cost of fuel to operate the machinery may be so high that it makes harvesting a financial loss.

I read an article on why American can't build infrastructure. Congress passed an $837 billion dollar stimulus plan. The projects this money was given to was subjected to 192,000 NEPA/CEQA reviews, the environmental review process. It takes, on average, 4.5 years to complete this process, although some can take more than a decade. A whole industry of consultants exists to serve this regulatory process.

Doing the simple math ($837 billion/192,000/4.5 years) yields a result of $968,000 per project per year. That's barely enough to hire the a handful of lawyers and consultants required just to do the regulatory compliance.

So what do you get? Very nearly 100% waste. A trillion dollars of waste.

They don't care. They'll do it again and again. It's not their money.

Comment 2 (7303) by OJB on 2022-09-18 at 22:10:43:

Yeah, I agree with what you're saying in general. Our current Labour (leftist) government in New Zealand wastes huge amounts of money on stupid projects and expects us to thank them for it. People forget it is *our* money they are giving away.

But, on the other hand, they often use the excuse of not having the money to avoid spending on projects they are not so enthusiastic about (which unfortunately are often the more worthwhile ones, in my opinion).

So even though financial restraint is not exactly a strength of many governments, they do understand what a budget is; they just need to be more consistent and rational in using them!

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