[Vision2020] Enough To Piss Off Our Village Locksmith

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May 18, 2012
Earmark Puts $17,000 Pans on Army Craft By ERIC
LICHTBLAU<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/eric_lichtblau/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

WASHINGTON — In the 1980s, the military had its infamous $800 toilet seat.
Today, it has a $17,000 drip pan.

Thanks to a powerful Kentucky congressman who has steered tens of millions
of federal dollars to his district, the Army has bought about $6.5 million
worth of the “leakproof” drip pans in the last three years to catch
transmission fluid on Black Hawk helicopters. And it might want more from
the Kentucky company that makes the pans, even though a similar pan from
another company costs a small fraction of the price: about $2,500.

The purchase shows the enduring power of earmarks, even though several
scandals have prompted efforts in Congress to rein them in. And at a time
when the Pentagon is facing billions of dollars in cutbacks — which include
shrinking the Army, trimming back purchases of fighter jets and retiring
warships — the eye-catching price tag for a small part has provoked sharp
criticism.

The Kentucky company, Phoenix Products, got the job to produce the pans
after Representative Harold
Rogers<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/harold_rogers/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
a Republican who is now the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee,
added an earmark to a 2009 spending bill. While the earmark came before
restrictions were placed on such provisions for for-profit companies, its
outlays have continued for the last three years.

The company’s owners are political contributors to the congressman, who has
been called the “Prince of Pork” by The Lexington Herald-Leader for his
history of delivering federal contracts to donors and others back home.

Military officials have said the pans work well, and Mr. Rogers defended
them.

“It’s important that Congress do what it can to provide our military with
the best resources to ensure their safety and advance our missions abroad,
while also saving taxpayer dollars wherever possible,” Mr. Rogers said in a
statement. “These dripping pans help accomplish both of these goals.”

But Bob Skillen, the chief engineer at a small manufacturer called VX
Aerospace, which has a plant in North Carolina, said he was shocked to see
what the Army was spending for the Black Hawk drip pans. He designs drip
pans that his company sells to the military for a different helicopter, the
UH-46, for about $2,500 per pan, or about one-eighth the price that his
Kentucky competitor charges. The pans attach beneath the roof of the
helicopter to catch leaking transmission fluid before it can seep into the
cabin.

“It’s not a supercomplex part,” said Mr. Skillen, an aerospace engineer who
used to work for the Navy. “As a taxpayer, I’m just like, this isn’t
right.”

He took his concerns to members of Congress, to military contracting
officials and, finally, to a government watchdog group, the nonpartisan
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group requested
documents from the government under the Freedom of Information Act last
year to learn more about the contract.

The Army turned over some information but said it did not have any
specifications or designs for the drip pans that might explain the price.
That was considered proprietary information held by Phoenix Products.

Melanie Sloan, who leads the Washington group, said she was troubled by the
secrecy surrounding what seemed to be a routine parts order. “How is it
possible that the government can’t say why it ended up with a drip pan that
was this much money?” she asked in an interview.

A Congressional aide said that Mr. Rogers inserted the earmark after Army
officials went to him with concerns about fluids that were leaking into the
cabins of Black Hawks, splattering not only crew members but also wounded
soldiers being airlifted to hospitals. “The Army came to the boss and said
this is an issue,” said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
in discussing internal communications.

The Army, however, said it was simply following a budget directive from
Congress. Mr. Rogers’s earmark came before House members informally agreed
to ban such provisions to for-profit companies.

“Congress mandated a leakproof transmission drip pan,” said Dov Schwartz,
an Army spokesman. The contract was awarded without competitive bids
because Phoenix was the only company deemed “approved and certified” for
the work, he said. “The number of people that make leakproof transmission
dripping pans is few and far between,” Mr. Schwartz said, adding that the
steel required for such pans is more costly than the plastic used in other
versions.

As of October, the Army had bought 374 drip pans from Phoenix Products at
an average cost of $17,000 — discounted from the company’s usual price of
$19,000, Mr. Schwartz said. He said the Army might get more pans if
financing is approved.

Tom Wilson, who owns Phoenix Products, defended his company’s pans as
better constructed and more durable than others on the market. Asked what
made them so costly, he declined to discuss specifics, saying that
disclosure of the company’s custom design could help competitors or even
aid America’s enemies.

Mr. Wilson and his wife, Peggy, who is the president of the company, have
been frequent contributors to Mr. Rogers’s political committee, as well as
to Republican groups. The company has paid at least $600,000 since 2005 to
a Washington lobbying firm, Martin Fisher Thompson & Associates, to
represent its interests on federal contracting issues, records show.

Mr. Rogers, in turn, has been a strong supporter of the manufacturer. He
has directed more than $17 million in work orders for Phoenix Products
since 2000.

Mr. Wilson said he did not think that his company’s relationship with Mr.
Rogers or its Washington connections were a major factor in the Army’s
decision to buy his pan. His company got the work, he said, because its
drip pan was “just simply a better product.”

But with the military facing $55 billion in budget cuts on Jan. 1 and
Defense Department leaders warning of dire consequences, others are not so
certain.

“You have to wonder,” said Ryan Alexander, the president of Taxpayers for
Common Sense, a nonpartisan group. “Is the Pentagon really getting the
message?”


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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