- 7 months
This reminds me of when Oregon awarded $300 million to Oracle to build a healthcare marketplace site right after the Affordable Care Act passed. They took the money, built a site that didn’t work, and the whole thing was scrapped at the last minute. We wound up using the site that had already been created by the federal government, which is still in use this very day. Also the state is currently in a deficit and wants to add tolls on our highways, increase registration costs for fuel efficient vehicles, and add a per-mile road tax so that the poorest among us can foot the bill for past decisions such as this.
- bluemellophone@lemmy.worldEnglish7 months
I mean, yes, that is bad… but the biennium budget for 2011-2013 was around $60 Billion, which means this project represented about half a percent of the overall budget. The current budget deficit is around $60 Million, but the kicker from 2024 was a record $5.6B in unexpected surplus.
The Oracle debacle is a good representation of why government contracting can be a mess, but I don’t think that project caused such a big long-term financial problem. Putting a toll on the I-5 bridge into/from WA is a massive issue, I agree with you there.