Montgomery, MD spends $1,300/hr on car sharing service
A good number of people may think they are getting a great deal on their cell phone service until they look at how many of the 1,400 or 2,000 (or more) minutes a month from their plan they actually use. If you only use 50 minutes of a 1,400 minute plan it can work out to a steep $1.60 per minute, depending on the particular plan's cost. The moral: Whenever you buy in bulk, take care not to over-buy. That's certainly what happened to Montgomery County Maryland officials when they signed up with Enterprise Rent-A-Car for a car sharing service. The county reportedly paid over $100,000 for the program at $1,100 per month per car. The only problem is almost no one bothered to actually use the 28 available cars. Employees with county-provided vehicles have been reluctant to give up those cars in favor of the shared vehicles. The cars were only signed out 16 times in 3 1/2 months for a total of 84 hours. That comes out to $1,300 per hour! Perhaps the county should have made the program mandatory by taking away the assigned vehicles first!
[Source: WUSA9.com]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nick 8:07PM (5/12/2009)
"Perhaps the county should have made the program mandatory by taking away the assigned vehicles first!"
Yeah, someone didn't do his job and wasted a ton of tax dollars for nothing. Pure waste.
$1100 per car / month is a very high amount to begin with, you can rent or lease a car for a lot less than that!!!!!!!!!!!!
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jharlan 8:20PM (5/12/2009)
Modern government at work. Nothing but the best for the taxpayers. Who's responsible?
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Nick 9:39PM (5/12/2009)
While waste is rampant in the government, we can't jump to conclusions and call all it does a waste. Well run governments are absolutely needed.
I hope those responsible for this waste of money were fired on the spot.....but that's just a tiny, tiny part of the entire waste. The U.S. military has spent tens of billions of dollars on projects that are not needed and never even materialize. In Irak alone, $20bn are missing, they simply disappeared from well connected U.S.construction and oil contractors that received no-bid contracts from the White House and Pentagon. And no-one even mentions that anywhere.
Throwback 9:17AM (5/13/2009)
Can you give me an example of well run government? How do you define a well run government? As any government entity grows, inefficiency and waste also grow. This example is text book. Someone decided this was a great idea based on a superb sales job by Enterprise no doubt. Of course the agency who signed deal, probably does not control the use of County vehicles so no coordination. Of course it isn't their money, I bet no one gets even a reprimand. Had I made this costly an error I would be fired, and rightly so.
harlanx6 10:36AM (5/13/2009)
You guys got it right. When the government says "We only want to help you", you better grab your wallet. I don't think any government has ever made a profit doing anything. They don't have to to survive.
Rich 8:10AM (5/13/2009)
We don't know the details in this particular case but the evidence as presented sure looks like someone screwed up. The problem that I've seen is that those in gov't that make costly mistakes are not held accountable for those mistakes.
In private enterprises those making a big mistake like this one would usually be put on the spot. That is unless you work at a Wall street bank and lose billions gambling on shady mortgages!
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