Yesterday, it was Politico stirring up a hornets’ nest in Vermont with its story about a trove of Young Republican Telegram messages that amounted to a dick-swinging contest over who could be the most offensive — including Vermont Sen. (for now) Sam Douglass. (Speaking of which, he is so far resisting universal calls for his resignation with what I can only describe as a “No one was driving, officer, we were all in the back seat singing” defense. Goddamn weasel.)

And today comes Grist.com with a story about wasteful spending by the state of Vermont in subcontracting part of its flood-response efforts. A story that might have been uncovered by one or more of our respected media operations, but oh well.

The story, entitled “How Vermont Lost Track of Millions in FEMA Flood Recovery Funds,” recounts how the state was apparently fleeced by its subcontractor. The consequences: federal aid didn’t go as far as it could have, and the feds might demand clawbacks from the state because of the apparent waste.

At a time when we don’t need to be giving the Trump administration any excuses to cut federal funding to a deep blue state.

At issue is a $2.9 million FEMA grant, issued last year to fund a disaster case management team to help flood victims. As Grist’s Tik Root reports, “The money was supposed to last two years but was on pace to be gone far sooner.” The responsible state official discovered the cause of the shortfall: The subcontractor had spent some of the money on hiring a response team but “was actually billing nearly half of the budget for its own staff.” One of those staffers, whose precise duties were unclear, was paid at the eye-popping rate of $293 per hour.

The subcontractor is Guidehouse, an out-of-state firm owned by private equity behemoth Bain Capital. Root further reports that the Scott administration has had an exclusive agreement with Guidehouse since the onset of the Covid pandemic:

The state competitively bid and signed a five-year master contract with Guidehouse that let any of its agencies issue a “task order” for services from the company, without having to seek bids again. While the bulk of the work seems to have stayed in the COVID realm, the governor told reporters in 2024 that the company was also helping to “augment” the state’s flood response effort. 

Gee, a long-term sweetheart deal for no-bid contracts. Whatever might have made Guidehouse think they could get away with fleecing the state?

Grist’s story turns to the broader issue of the Trump administration’s devolution of emergency response operations to state governments, which are less capable of overseeing subcontractors than are the feds. It quotes Craig Fugate, head of FEMA under President Obama, as saying this Vermont deal is a “classic” case of what can happen when a state or municipality tries to manage these tasks: “You see a lot of money getting spent on process. More meetings, more reviews… it doesn’t seem that much work is getting done, and you end up with a lot of billable hours.”

It reminded me very much of Governor Scott’s much-touted and laughably inadequate temporary family shelters, which were opened last November. The state spent millions to house a relative handful of homeless families for a brief period of time. The contract to operate those shelters went to an out-of-state provider that charged the state $107.50 per hour for basic “shelter team workers” and as much as $325 an hour for “program managers.” By my calculation, the money spent on those family shelters — the vast majority going to the outside contractor — would have paid for nearly 40,000 nights in state-funded motel rooms. You know, the voucher program that’s so wasteful that the governor can’t wait to kill it?

(It also reminds me of Scott’s years-long dalliance with creating a multi-facility “prison campus” to be built by CoreCivic, the private prison contractor of dubious reputation. If he’d had his way, we’d be leasing most of our prisons from those bastards. He’s never tried to push the plan very hard because, I’m sure, he knows it’d be a nonstarter in the Legislature.)

This all belies the Scott administration’s self-described role as guardians of the public purse and champions of affordability. There are circumstances in which hiring an outside firm is the only way forward, no matter the cost. But Team Scott is putting together a track record of paying top dollar to big consultancy firms. And it has a five-year relationship with the company that seems to be profiteering at the expense of Vermont flood victims.

And we wouldn’t know about this Guidehouse affair at all if not for the diligence of a news operation based in Seattle, Washington, which somehow dug up a scoop that no one in Vermont managed to uncover.

Makes you wonder what else they’re missing.