"$750K sculpture sickened FBI workers in Miami"

[fishing]

http://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2016/12/the-750k-sculpture-that-hospitalized-fbi-miami-workers-107768

Does anyone here have direct experience with how procurement decisions such as these are made at the GSA? (Please no general procurement anecdotes from your small town PD or other government agency etc or other tangentially related info - I'm asking specifically about the non-direct side of the "business").

In what world does a group of people get together and decide that such a thing is a good use of funds, other than perhaps to spend surplus or already requisitioned but unallocated monies?

Totally get some of the possible justifications for it that may be used as excuses (its a professional building that needs decor commiserate with other like office spaces etc, but how do they pass a sniff test?

[Totem Polar]

I can't come close to answering your question, but I felt moved to google the sculpture, and my professional opinion is that it looks like a hardwood cat turd.

[SeriousStudent]

Gee, people having allergic reactions to red cedar - whodathunkit?

[BehindBlueI's]

https://fsmedia.imgix.net/33/f6/ff/a5/6f15/45c9/95f0/74c1e52ebed9/cedrus.png?dpr=2&auto=format,compress&q=75

Wow. What senator's son-in-law made that....art?


The office’s only nurse was one of the 17 people affected by the cedar, suggesting (perhaps) that the wood had gained some level of sentience and was targeting potential threats first.

Ha!

[EVP]

That Miami field office looks nice and expensive all on the tax payers dime.

[YVK]

Will make a nice fireplace.

[1slow]

Spend the money on something useful like training not useless shit that does not further the mission.

[Arbninftry]

Looks like firewood!

Let's make SMORES!

[Arbninftry]

And what a waste of good money. Whomever signed off on that shitpile needs fired, hot tar poured on them and feathers thrown in the general area.

[Luke]

I like it. Judging by the looks of that building, buying a 750k sculpture would equal out to me going to Walmart and getting a new lamp.

[Hambo]

I'm always skeptical of "workers sickened or overcome by sculpture/carpeting/lighting/whatever". Get back to work, wage slaves.

[Greg]

I'm always skeptical of "workers sickened or overcome by sculpture/carpeting/lighting/whatever". Get back to work, wage slaves.

Maybe they hired a bunch of millennials. Do they need a safe space?

[blues]

Having worked with some of the agents in that office in years past, I'm just going to sit here and smirk.

(But...I don't want anyone to actually get ill or anything remotely like that. A little dose of nausea or the runs would be more than sufficient. ;))

[OlongJohnson]

And what a waste of good money. Whoever signed off on that shitpile needs to be fired, hot tar poured on them and feathers thrown in the general area.

FIFY

[NickA]

"After the decision was made to remove the statue, it went on a more than 1,000-mile journey from Miami to Alexandria, Virginia, where GSA has an off-site fine arts facility. It is currently awaiting its next stop at a storage facility in Maryland."

Where it will no doubt be studied by the government's top men.
Top. Men.

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20161203/d2fdac46fe303b6417a04a34a1b84b87.jpg

[HCM]

Spend the money on something useful like training not useless shit that does not further the mission.

That's not the way it works. Training with come out of the FBI's budget at their discretion.

In general Federal civilian agencies are not able to own or directly lease their own facilities. GSA owns or leases the space and then sublets it to the individual agencies.

The idea of GSA is to provide a single logistical support agency for all federal agencies and provide cost saving by avoiding redundancy, of having each agency having their own facilities personnel, paying different prices etc.

Unfortunately it doesn't work out that way in real life. GSA is primarily funded by the rent and fees to receive from other agencies. Like any other parasite they try to suck as much blood as possible.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2012/0417/GSA-scandal-Does-agency-have-culture-of-waste-fraud-and-abuse

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/23/nation/la-na-gsa-corruption-20120423

[jetfire]

The GSA is a dumpster fire and one of the biggest sources of FWA in the federal government.


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