Don’t you love when you reach into the pocket of those pants you haven’t worn in a while and find a $5 bill? It’s exciting enough to make your day! Now imagine reaching into your pocket and pulling out hundreds of millions of dollars.
It actually happened in Virginia.
An audit of VDOT has determined that the agency left nearly a half billion dollars unspent last year. That money certainly could have kept open rest stops, which were closed due to budget constraints.
How can you let hundreds of millions of dollars go unaccounted for? Virginia’s secretary of transportation says you can blame it on bureaucracy.
“The process is broken,” Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton said. “Even though we have modern technology and a lot of modern practices employed in the actually construction operations, the processes that support those are still in the paper and memo stages. They’ve never gone back and looked at the processes they have employed for a very long time.”
Investigators say they found no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing. More information will be revealed at a 2 p.m. news conference.
