The D.C. Department of Public Works has been overbilling the city government for auto repairs, sometimes by as much as 100 percent.

The D.C. Department of Public Works has been over-billing District agencies: $6,000 to fix the air-conditioning and $500 to change a fuse are just a few of the discrepancies WTOP uncovered through a massive Freedom of Information Act request.

The records reveal a pattern of mismanagement, over-billing and poor bookkeeping resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in waste.

[...]

The agency routinely sells used tires to District agencies and charges them for new tires. But the cost of the tires in most cases was less than the cost to install the tires. DPW charged $66 for a used tire, $79 to install, plus the $10 miscellaneous fee — $155 for one used tire.

[...]

DPW routinely charged more than private sector providers for services like oil changes. In some case charging close to $200 for an oil, lube and filter. In one case the agency charged $46 to top off the windshield wiper fluid.

Of course, for all its incompetenece, my experience has been that the D.C. government is extremely efficient when it comes to things like writing parking tickets or issuing tickets for seatbelt violations, then exercising due diligence to make sure those fines get paid.

Funny how that works.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2006 at 9:56 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.