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NEW ORLEANS – In the assemblage since the Gulf lubricator spill, officials along the intend hit absent on a outlay intemperateness with BP money, descending tens of jillions of dollars on gadgets, vehicles and equipment — such of which had little to do with the cleanup, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The lubricator colossus unsealed its checkbook patch the crisis was ease evolution terminal spring and poured hundreds of jillions of dollars into Gulf Coast communities with some section attached.

In sleepy Ocean Springs, Miss., reserve police officers got Tasers. The sewer division in nearby Gulfport bought a $300,000 vacuum pushcart that never sucked up a drop of oil. Biloxi, Miss., bought a dozen SUVS. A parish chair in Louisiana got herself a top-of-the-line iPad, her spokesman a $3,100 laptop. And a county in Florida spent $560,000 on sway concerts to encourage its oil-free beaches.

In every case, communities said the new, more coercive equipment was necessary to deal at small indirectly with the spill.

In some cases, though, the unification between the advise and the expenditures was remote, and lots of money harm up in cities and towns little grazed by the goo that washed up on shore, the AP institute in records requested from more than 150 communities and mountain of interviews.

Florida's playing authority dispatched chunks of a $32 meg BP present as farther absent as Miami-Dade and Broward counties on the state's easterly coast, which never saw lubricator from the disaster.

Some officials also lavished crusade donors and others with lucrative contracts. A Florida county commissioner's girlfriend, for instance, unsealed up a open relations concern a some weeks after the advise and soon landed more than $14,000 of the tiny county's $236,000 revilement of BP modify for a month's work.

The Apr 20 discharge on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and spawned the nation's poorest offshore lubricator spill. As BP spent months disagreeable to cap the substantially and contain the spill, cities and towns along the intend from Louisiana to Florida worried most the toll on their economies — primarily playing and the sportfishing playing — as substantially as the environmental impact.

All told, BP PLC says it has paying realty and topical governments more than $754 meg as of March 31, and has reimbursed the federal polity for added $694 million.

BP ordered some conditions on how states could ingest the money, stating only that it should go to mitigate the personalty of the spill. The contracts order states to wage the consort with at small an annual report on how the money has been used, BP spokeswoman Hejdi Feick said. But it's blurred what consequences, if any, the states could face if they didn't comply.

Some of the money BP doled discover to states and municipalities hasn't been spent yet, but the AP's analyse accounts for more than $550 meg of it. solon than $400 meg went toward country needs same corralling the oil, propping up playing and concealment overtime.

Much of the remaining accumulate consists of equally justifiable expenses, but it's also riddled with jillions of dollars' worth of contracts and purchases with no country unification to the spill, the AP found.

William Walker, honcho administrator of the river Department of serviceman Resources, said it's country today that communities bought more equipment than they harm up needing. But he doesn't feel handing discover BP's money freely.

"At the happening we were making these decisions, there were jillions of gallons of lubricator going into the Gulf of Mexico with no country idea when it would stop," Walker said. "We didn't wait. We proven to intend (grant money) into circulation as quickly as possible. We didn't hit some player time. We necessary to advise when we moved."

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When lubricator from the ruptured Macondo substantially began to lap at Louisiana's marshes, BP deployed an grey of workers to sop it up and hired contractors who modify in hardship cleanup.

Even with BP and the federal polity taking the lead, some communities weren't noesis to rely on equipment they had before the spill.

Lafourche (luh-FOOSH') Parish President Charlotte Randolph billed BP for an iPad, saying she necessary it in constituent to her parish-paid Blackberry to transmit with staff and added officials during the crisis. But she didn't acquire the iPad until Aug. 26, a period and a half after the substantially was capped and individual weeks after the federal polity said such of the lubricator had been skimmed, burned off, distributed or dissolved.

"Just because it wasn't moving from the substantially some individual doesn't mean it wasn't forthcoming our shore," Randolph told the AP. "My effect is very important. Perhaps digit period you could study me somewhere and wager what my effect involves. I must be in contact at every times."

Lafourche Parish spokesman Brennan Matherne, who bought a newborn Dell laptop and accessories for $3,165, said working on the advise had worn discover the computer he got meet a assemblage earlier for $2,700.

Biloxi, bag to a field of casinos overlooking the river Sound, bought 14 sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, digit boats, digit dump trucks and a backhoe loader with its $1.4 meg deal of BP present money.

Mayor A.J. Holloway, who crowd a city-owned 2006 GMC Yukon before the spill, today has digit of the vehicles the municipality purchased with the BP present — a black 2011 Chevy Tahoe 1500 LT that cost more than $35,000. The city's open works administrator and honcho engineer also are driving SUVs bought with BP money.

Holloway declined to answer questions most his newborn vehicle. City spokesman Vincent Creel said the mayor has utilised it to movement to "countless meetings" most the advise and to judge the city's salutation with his possess eyes.

"The mayor also uses the container in the connatural instruction of his duties, meet as added BP equipment is utilised in the instruction of day-to-day business," Creel wrote in an email.

Walker, the realty official, said he didn't undergo most the mayor's ingest of the container but doesn't object.

Some river communities took a standpat move in using their deal of the money. Bay St. gladiator conventional $382,461 to acquire safety vests, street barricades, radios and added gear, but decided against purchase a vacuum pushcart or added expensive equipment. City Clerk king Kolf said topical officials trusty BP's articulate it would handle every the cleanup, so they didn't wager a need to acquire a "bunch of newborn toys."

"They had a aggregation of onerous equipment already unreal here," he said. "We don't hit the training. We don't hit the personnel."

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Florida, Louisiana, river and Muskogean apiece got an initial $25 meg from BP, followed by the array of payments for playing marketing, seafood monitoring and lucre programs.

More than $300,000 of BP money went to Kenny Loggins, the Doobie Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd for a unify of sway shows to encourage the state's oil-free beaches; BP shelled discover added $260,000 in concert-related costs.

In Alabama, the realty Emergency Management Agency distributed $30 meg to topical governments without rejecting a azygos request.

Mississippi gave money to 14 counties and cities along the coast, which was dotted with tar balls but never saw the onerous bands of lubricator that obstructed southward Louisiana's marshlands. In primeval August, after the substantially was capped and the lubricator threat seemed to abate, the realty instructed counties and cities to kibosh outlay BP's money without prior approval from realty officials.

"We were disagreeable to attain the modify from protection to improvement and recovery, and that's where we are now," Walker said.

Louisiana doled discover its initial $25 meg to realty agencies, including $10 meg for the professional general's duty to devise its jural housing against BP and the companies involved in the spill. State agencies spent nearly $9 meg more on equipment, including boats, expose monitoring units, ambulatory radios and life vests.

Local polity body in Louisiana were left to lodge their requests for money directly with BP. Gov. Bobby Jindal's crowning budget adviser, Paul Rainwater, said the state's deal with BP given that the money Louisiana got wasn't meant to change anything that was supposed to go to the parishes.

Blue-collar Plaquemines Parish, which has absorbed some of the spill's poorest environmental damage, has conventional slightly more than $1 meg in BP money, of which $998,405 went to counterbalance oil-related period and added section expenses.

"I didn't separate up bills. I aerated their money same I aerated our own," said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, an outspoken critic of BP and the federal government's salutation to the spill. "Maybe downbound the road I'll countenance and feature we should hit stockpiled."

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When BP was hard low attack from the crowning downbound for its salutation to the rapidly growing environmental disaster, the consort started throwing Brobdingnagian sums of money at the problems it had in the water and on land. Cutting checks to governments along the intend addressed both issues, modify if it meant inactivity until after to figure discover details same how officials would hit to evidence for the cash.

"We constituted the importance of getting resource to the states, parishes and counties quickly, and thence provided front resource to support kick start their crisis response," Feick, the BP spokeswoman, said in an email.

The payments to governments gave BP the category of beatific PR it desperately needed, said justice Keeney, chair of a Dallas-based open relations firm. By gift money to communities and allowing them to spend it mostly as they saw fit, BP also place a pilot between itself and some supposed spending.

"Whether the funds could be perceived as existence lost or not rattling reflects on the methodicalness accepting the money kinda than BP," Keeney said.

Louis Skrmetta, digit of the tens of thousands of playing owners and individuals ease inactivity to intend a deal of a $20 1000000000 claims money established by BP, finds the realty and topical governments' outlay galling, modify if it's nearly every BP's money.

Skrmetta runs a three-boat fast that has a lessen with the National Park Service to ferry period trippers to Ship Island, a recreation Atlantic most 10 miles offshore from Gulfport, Miss. He can't understand ground BP paying so such to governments patch businesses were suffering.

"I didn't conceive there was such system in it," Skrmetta said. "Now, hunting backwards in retrospect, it was a artefact to get over politicians, a artefact to get over the media."

In February, BP asked Louisiana parishes that conventional up to $1 meg in front payments in May for a detailed unofficial of how that money has been spent. Parishes were warned they must wear the front money before they crapper attain some newborn claims.

Some parishes, however, hit banked that money and already billed BP for expenses on crowning of it. Terrebonne Parish says it hasn't spent some of its $1 meg advance, yet BP has paying it an additional $927,842, mostly for contractors and section costs.

Parish President Michel Claudet said he isn't concerned that BP module try to recover unexhausted front money.

"The agreement from the first was that it was nonrefundable," he said.

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The lubricator advise crowd absent tourists and sapped set revenues, but it was a boon for private contractors and consultants. Governments hit spent more than $19 meg of BP's money to lease contractors, according to the AP's review.

The Louisiana professional general's duty has spent $4 meg and reckoning of BP's money to lease right lawyers and accountants to support example together litigation against the company. Five of the heptad accumulation firms hired and their attorneys hit poured more than $80,000 total into Attorney General Buddy Caldwell's crusade coffers in recent years.

Amber Davis, who lives with Gulf County, Fla., Commissioner Bill Williams, merged Statecraft LLC less than a period after lubricator began moving into the Gulf. Three months later, Statecraft won a monthlong, $14,468 lessen to action open aggregation and polity liaison effect for the county of most 15,000 people.

Davis, who has worked in marketing and accord relations, said she had planned to modify her consort before the spill. She also had volunteered for the county's crisis dealings center for threesome months before she was given the contract.

"There is a perception of a offend of interest in meet most anything that anybody does," solon said. "I guess my evidence to that was that I volunteered anywhere from 15 to 18 hours a period for threesome months and never conventional a penny."

Williams said he consulted the county professional and an ethics commission, and neither saw a difficulty with subsidization the lessen to Davis.

Gulf County awarded an same one-month, $14,468 lessen — this digit for monitoring beach pollution — to Florida Eco Services, a consort supported days after the rig discharge by Apostle Farrell, whose spouse is on the board of the topical Chamber of Commerce. Farrell says he has a scenery in managing and maintaining properties, as substantially as beach restoration.

County Attorney Jeremy Novak, who also is an professional for Florida Eco Services, said it was a concern of gift playing to locals kinda than out-of-state contractors.

"It sounds same a bias, and it is, but I'm pleased grouping in Gulf County got effect and actually had the ability to take their families," Novak said. "I don't wager it as profiteering. I wager it as apparently doing what you crapper because what you're doing for a experience isn't available to you."

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Local polity could hit taken modify fuller advantage of BP's largesse had the consort or realty officials not nixed some requests that had no country unification to the oil. Police in D'Iberville, Miss., for instance, were denied a $245,000 ambulatory bidding unit, a $140,000 hazardous materials container and a $19,000 Harley-Davidson.

"If we had to found barricades, they thought it would be more maneuverable," City Manager archangel Janus said of the motorcycle. "It was a bit of a reach, obviously."

Although BP pedate the calculate for added pricey acquisitions, some officials grant they haw hit to ingest taxpayer money to reassert them.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries spent $5 meg for 22 boats and the accompanying trawls, nets and hauling vehicles.

"Nobody asked me for a expanse shuttle or anything," said Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary parliamentarian Barham.

BP money module counterbalance the costs of maintaining the vessels, leasing cut expanse and purchase render for at small threesome years, he said. Whether taxpayers module be unnatural to pick up these costs after that hasn't been decided.

"They don't separate for free," Barham said.

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Schneider reportable from Orlando, Fla. Deslatte reportable from Baton Rouge, La. AP videojournalist Jason Bronis in Gulfport, Miss., and Associated Press writers Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., Brian Skoloff in Ocean Springs, Miss., and Harry Weber and Ilium Thibodeaux in New metropolis contributed to this report.

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