The Sims — Special Government Idiocy Edition!

This article in the Washington Post highlights what happens when you mix post-9/11 paranoia, big government, lack of institutional intelligence (sorry for the redundancy), and vast pools of taxpayers' money.

Three years ago, Sunnye L. Sims lived in a two-bedroom apartment north of San Diego, paying $1,025 in monthly rent. Then she landed a dream job, with $5.4 million in pay for nine months of work. Now she owns a $1.9 million stucco mansion with lofty ceilings on a hilltop, featuring sun-splashed palm trees and a circular driveway. "She really went uphill," said Jerry Collins, a maintenance man at her former apartment complex who recalled Sims talking about her ambitions.

Sims is not a Hollywood starlet. She is a meeting-and-events planner who built her fortune on a U.S. government contract. In 2002, her tiny company secured a no-bid subcontract to manage logistics on an urgent federal project to protect the nation's airports in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Sims, now 42, recruited hundreds of people to help hire a government force of 60,000 airline passenger screeners on a tight deadline. With little experience, her tiny company was asked to help set up and run screener-assessment centers in a hurry at more than 150 hotels and other facilities. Her company eventually billed $24 million.

The company, Eclipse Events Inc., was among the most important of the 168 subcontractors hired by prime contractor NCS Pearson Inc. The cost of the overall contract rose in less than a year to $741 million from $104 million, and federal auditors concluded that $303 million of that spending was unsubstantiated. Spurred by that audit, federal agents are examining the entire contract and focusing on Eclipse, according to government officials and Pearson.

[...] Eclipse came out of nowhere, starting as a one-woman operation based in Sims's apartment. She was hired in a hurry, through word of mouth, recommended by someone who did not review her background in detail. She had worked for more than a decade as an event planner for the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. But her company, Eclipse, did not exist as a corporation until Sims got the Pearson subcontract; two weeks later, she filed incorporation papers. Over the next several months, Sims hired hundreds of freelance meeting planners, many of them sight unseen.As the number of hotel assessment sites expanded — the Transportation Security Administration doubled the number of screeners to be hired — Eclipse's subcontract grew to $24 million from $1.1 million.

Though Eclipse is being investigated for possible overcharging and fraud, at this point is seems just as likely that what the tiny company did was on the up-and-up. If I charge the federal gub'mint a thousand dollars for a pound of apples and its accountants readily pay me, the ludicrous cost of the purchase doesn't necessarily signify I did anything illegal.

Of course, my pricey apples would be a terrific bargain compared to what the Transportation Security Administration, through Pearson, paid Sunnye Sims for her contribution.

The auditors noted that Sims not only paid herself $5.4 million in compensation as "President/Owner" but also that she gave herself a $270,000 pension.

For a nine-month project. Nice work if you can get it.

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Also in the WaPo story:

Her friends dismissed the possibility of impropriety, saying [Sims] and [Eclipse VP] Sullivan are both devout Christians who would never take advantage of the government for personal gain.

Well, OK then. Christians. I see. Devout ones — like, they go to church and stuff. Yeah. No way would Christians ever outrageously enrich themselves. Glad that's settled.

Comments

[Phil]

Well, you take any advantage you can, I guess.