NewsChief.com on Senator Coburn, Broadcasting Board of Governors and government waste

As reported by NewsChief.com, federal agencies owned or leased more than 662,000 cars, vans, sport-utility vehicles, buses and ambulances, which consume about 1 million gallons of fuel per day and cost $4.6 billion per year to maintain.

The NewsChief.com article, published January 8, 2012, quotes from a report by Sen. Tom Coburn that the National Science Foundation, which issues grants and does no outdoor field research, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which counts only nine members, each have 53 SUVs.

This is an old story, which received the following response from BBG employee Kim Andrew Elliott in his private blog:

Somebody on Senator Coburn’s staff apparently thinks the Broadcasting Board of Governors consists only of the nine members of the board, rather than five entities with 3,791 employees. As discussed in a previous post, the SUVs are probably used mostly at transmitter sites.

Other than that, Senator Coburn’s plan to save $9 trillion in federal spending leaves US international broadcasting remarkably unscathed, even though there are obvious opportunities for greater efficiency. On the other hand, his report takes particular aim at every agency, entity, and facet of US domestic public broadcasting.

Kim Andrew Elliott’s out-of-hand dismissal of Senator Coburn’s point, especially Elliott’s charge that the Senator does not know much about the BBG, are unfair. Senator Coburn has been a frequent critic of the BBG and knows well what the agency does and does not do. Read: Senator Coburn: no transparency or accountability at BBG

Related posts:

Shortlink for this post: http://wp.me/p1PTlq-3dp