Silly us. It turns out we should have opposed the bond issue on the grounds that the DOT is a cesspool of corruption and waste, as reported in today's ProJo:
Bottom line: the now-infamous $102,858 typist was not an isolated case.
And the 145.99-percent markup the DOT was paying Vanasse Hangen Brustlin to provide that typist to an in-house traffic-monitoring center was by no means the highest of the “overhead” rates the DOT has been paying its consultants.
And today, Projo's news blog reported that Plexus, a company that has multiple DOT contracts currently under investigation, is owned by the DOT's chief engineer's nephew. The engineer in question, Edmund T. Parker, “has been put on paid administrative leave and any documents relating to contracts are to be turned over to the U.S. Attorney's Office and state police.”