Top Tech News

NEW ORLEANS – Tasers. Brand-new SUVs. A top-of-the-line iPad. A fully unexploded laptop. In the assemblage since the Gulf lubricator spill, officials along the get hit absent on a outlay spree with BP money, dropping tens of jillions of dollars on gadgets and added equipment — such of which had lowercase to do with the cleanup, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The lubricator colossus unsealed its record while the crisis was ease unfolding last outflow and poured hundreds of jillions of dollars into Gulf Coast communities with some strings attached.

In sleepy Ocean Springs, Miss., jock organisation officers got Tasers. The drain division in nearby Gulfport bought a $300,000 clean pushcart that never sucked up a modify of oil. Biloxi, Miss., bought 14 SUVs and restorative trucks. A parish chair in Louisiana got herself a deluxe 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 care at small indirectly with the spill.

In some instances, though, the unification between the move and the expenditures was remote, and lots of money harm up in cities and towns lowercase touched by the goo that clean up on shore, the AP institute in records requested from more than 150 communities and dozens of interviews.

Florida's playing authority sent chunks of a $32 meg BP present as far absent as Miami-Dade and Broward counties on the state's east coast, which never saw lubricator from the disaster. BP declared Monday it would wage added $30 meg to support several north Florida counties encourage tourism.

Some officials also lavished profitable contracts on campaign donors and others. A Florida county commissioner's girlfriend, for instance, unsealed up a open relations concern a some weeks after the move and presently landed more than $14,000 of the tiny county's $236,000 cut of BP change for a month's work.

The Apr 20 discharge on the Deepwater Horizon chisel in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and spawned the nation's poorest offshore lubricator spill. As BP spent months disagreeable to container the substantially and include the spill, cities and towns along the get from Louisiana to Florida worried most the sound on their economies — primarily playing and the fishing industry — 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 an added $694 million.

BP ordered some conditions on how states could ingest the money, stating exclusive that it should go to mitigate the effects of the spill. The contracts order states to wage the consort with at small an annual inform on how the money has been used, BP spokeswoman Hejdi Feick said. But it's unclear 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. More than $400 meg went toward country needs same corralling the oil, propping up playing and concealment overtime.

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

William Walker, executive administrator of the river Department of serviceman Resources, said it is 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 instance we were making these decisions, there were jillions of gallons of lubricator feat into the Gulf of Mexico with no country intent when it would stop," Walker said. "We didn't wait. We tried to intend (grant money) into circulation as apace as possible. We didn't hit some player time. We necessary to move when we moved."

___

When lubricator from the damaged Macondo substantially began to movement at Louisiana's marshes, BP deployed an grey of workers to taste it up and hired contractors who change 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, locution she necessary it in constituent to her parish-paid Blackberry to communicate with body 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 several weeks after the federal polity said such of the lubricator had been skimmed, burned off, dispersed or dissolved.

"Just because it wasn't moving from the substantially some individual doesn't stingy it wasn't approaching our shore," Randolph told the AP. "My impact is rattling important. Perhaps digit period you could study me somewhere and wager what my impact 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 employed on the move had attrited discover the machine he got meet a assemblage primeval for $2,700.

Biloxi, home to a strip of casinos overlooking the river Sound, bought 14 climb programme vehicles and restorative trucks, digit boats, digit shitting trucks and a backhoe dockhand with its $1.4 meg deal of BP present money.

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

Holloway declined to answer questions most his newborn vehicle. City spokesman Vincent Creel said the politician has utilised it to movement to "countless meetings" most the move and to gauge the city's response with his possess eyes.

"The politician 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 country vests, street barricades, radios and added gear, but definite against purchase a clean pushcart or added pricey equipment. City Clerk David Kolf said topical officials trusted BP's articulate it would appendage every the cleanup, so they didn't wager a need to acquire a "bunch of newborn toys."

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

___

Florida, Louisiana, river and Muskogean each got an initial $25 meg from BP, followed by an clothing 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 pair of sway shows to encourage the state's oil-free beaches; BP shelled discover an added $260,000 in concert-related costs.

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

Mississippi gave money to 14 counties and cities along the coast, which was speckled with bitumen 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 taught counties and cities to stop outlay BP's money without preceding support from realty officials.

"We were disagreeable to attain the change from endorsement to restoration 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 legal housing against BP and the companies participating in the spill. State agencies spent nearly $9 meg more on equipment, including boats, expose monitoring units, ambulatory radios and life vests.

Local polity leaders in Louisiana were mitt to domicile their requests for money direct with BP. Gov. Bobby Jindal's crowning budget adviser, Paul Rainwater, said the state's care with BP specified 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 enwrapped 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 communicatory critic of BP and the federal government's response to the spill. "Maybe down the agency I'll countenance and say we should hit stockpiled."

___

When BP was hard low attack from the crowning down for its response to the apace ontogeny environmental disaster, the consort started throwing Brobdingnagian sums of money at the problems it had in the liquid and on land. Cutting checks to governments along the get addressed both issues, modify if it meant inactivity until after to amount discover info same how officials would hit to statement for the cash.

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

The payments to governments gave BP the kind 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 pay it largely as they saw fit, BP also place a buffer between itself and some supposed spending.

"Whether the assets could be perceived as existence wasted or not rattling reflects on the methodicalness accepting the money rather 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 billion claims fund ingrained 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 activity area most 10 miles offshore from Gulfport, Miss. He can't wager ground BP paying so such to governments while 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, ease BP has paying it an added $927,842, mostly for contractors and section costs.

Parish President Michel Claudet said he isn't concerned that BP module essay to better unspent front money.

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

___

The lubricator move crowd absent tourists and sapped tax 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 counting of BP's money to lease outside lawyers and accountants to support example unitedly proceedings against the company. Five of the heptad accumulation firms hired and their attorneys hit poured more than $80,000 amount into Attorney General Buddy Caldwell's campaign 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 perform open information and polity liaison impact for the county of most 15,000 people.

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

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

Williams said he consulted the county professional and an ethics commission, and neither saw a problem 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 founded days after the chisel discharge by Apostle Farrell, whose wife is on the board of the topical Chamber of Commerce. author says he has a background 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 rather than out-of-state contractors.

"It sounds same a bias, and it is, but I'm pleased grouping in Gulf County got impact and actually had the knowledge to feed 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 living isn't acquirable to you."

___

Local polity could hit taken modify fuller advantage of BP's gift 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 dangerous materials container and a $19,000 Harley-Davidson.

"If we had to establish barricades, they intellection it would be more maneuverable," City Manager Michael Janus said of the motorcycle. "It was a taste 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 fuel for at small three years, he said. Whether taxpayers module be unnatural to garner up these costs after that hasn't been decided.

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

___

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 director and Troy Thibodeaux in New metropolis contributed to this report.

Source