BP money buys Gulf Coast millions in gadgets, cars

NEW ORLEANS -- Tasers. Brand-new SUVs. A top-of-the-line iPad. A fully loaded laptop. In the year since the Gulf oil spill, officials along the coast have gone on a spending spree with BP money, dropping tens of millions of dollars on gadgets and other gear -- much of which had little to do with the cleanup, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oil giant opened its checkbook while the crisis was still unfolding last spring and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Gulf Coast communities with few strings attached.

In sleepy Ocean Springs, Miss., reserve police officers got Tasers. The sewer department in nearby Gulfport bought a $300,000 vacuum truck that never sucked up a drop of oil. Biloxi, Miss., bought 14 SUVs. A parish president in Louisiana got herself a deluxe iPad, her spokesman a $3,100 laptop. And a county in Florida spent $560,000 on rock concerts to promote its oil-free beaches.

In every case, communities said the new, more powerful equipment was needed to deal at least indirectly with the spill.

In many instances, though, the connection between the spill and the expenditures was remote, and lots of money wound up in cities and towns little touched by the goo that washed up on shore, the AP found in records requested from more than 150 communities and dozens of interviews.

Florida’s tourism agency sent chunks of a $32 million BP grant as far away as Miami-Dade and Broward counties on the state’s east coast, which never saw oil from the disaster. BP announced Monday it would give another $30 million to help several northwest Florida counties promote tourism.

Some officials also lavished lucrative contracts on campaign donors and others. A Florida county commissioner’s girlfriend, for instance, opened up a public relations firm a few weeks after the spill and soon landed more than $14,000 of the tiny county’s $236,000 cut of BP cash for a month’s work.

All told, BP PLC says it has paid state and local governments more than $754 million as of March 31, and has reimbursed the federal government an additional $694 million.

BP set few conditions on how states could use the money, stating only that it should go to mitigate the effects of the spill. The contracts require states to provide the company with at least an annual report on how the money has been used, BP spokeswoman Hejdi Feick said. But it’s unclear what consequences, if any, the states could face if they didn’t comply.

Some of the money BP doled out to states and municipalities hasn’t been spent yet, but the AP’s review accounts for more than $550 million of it. More than $400 million went toward clear needs like corralling the oil, propping up tourism and covering overtime.

Much of the remaining chunk consists of equally justifiable expenses, but it is also riddled with millions of dollars’ worth of contracts and purchases with no clear connection to the spill, the AP found.

William Walker, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, said it is clear now that communities bought more equipment than they wound up needing. But he doesn’t regret handing out BP’s money freely.

“At the time we were making these decisions, there were millions of gallons of oil going into the Gulf of Mexico with no clear idea when it would stop,” Walker said.

Even with BP and the federal government taking the lead, many communities weren’t content to rely on equipment they had before the spill.

Lafourche (luh-FOOSH’) Parish President Charlotte Randolph billed BP for an iPad, saying she needed it in addition to her parish-paid Blackberry to communicate with staff and other officials during the crisis. But she didn’t buy the iPad until Aug. 26, a month and a half after the well was capped and several weeks after the federal government said much of the oil had been skimmed, burned off, dispersed or dissolved.

Biloxi, home to a strip of casinos overlooking the Mississippi Sound, bought 14 sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, two boats, two dump trucks and a backhoe loader with its $1.4 million share of BP grant money.

Mayor A.J. Holloway, who drove a city-owned 2006 GMC Yukon before the spill, now has one of the vehicles the city purchased with the BP grant -- a black 2011 Chevy Tahoe 1500 LT that cost more than $35,000. The city’s public works director and chief engineer also are driving SUVs bought with BP money.

City spokesman Vincent Creel said the mayor has used it to travel to “countless meetings” about the spill and to gauge the city’s response with his own eyes.

Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama each got an initial $25 million from BP, followed by an array of payments for tourism marketing, seafood monitoring and cleanup programs.

In Alabama, the state Emergency Management Agency distributed $30 million to local governments without rejecting a single request.

Mississippi gave money to 14 counties and cities along the coast, which was dotted with tar balls but never saw the heavy bands of oil that choked south Louisiana’s marshlands.

Louisiana doled out its initial $25 million to state agencies, including $10 million for the attorney general’s office to devise its legal case against BP and the companies involved in the spill. State agencies spent nearly $9 million more on equipment, including boats, air monitoring units, mobile radios and life vests.

Local government leaders in Louisiana were left to lodge their requests for money directly with BP.

Blue-collar Plaquemines Parish, which has absorbed some of the spill’s worst environmental damage, has received slightly more than $1 million in BP money, of which $998,405 went to cover oil-related overtime and other payroll expenses.

“I didn’t run up bills. I treated their money like I treated our own,” said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, an outspoken critic of BP and the federal government’s response to the spill. “Maybe down the road I’ll look and say we should have stockpiled.”

The oil spill drove away tourists and sapped tax revenues, but it was a boon for private contractors and consultants. Governments have spent more than $19 million of BP’s money to hire contractors, according to the AP’s review.

Amber Davis, who lives with Gulf County, Fla., Commissioner Bill Williams, incorporated Statecraft LLC less than a month after oil began streaming into the Gulf. Three months later, Statecraft won a monthlong, $14,468 contract to perform public information and government liaison work for the county of about 15,000 people.

Davis, who has worked in marketing and community relations, said she had planned to form her company before the spill. She also had volunteered for the county’s emergency operations center for three months before she was given the contract.

“There is a perception of a conflict of interest in just about anything that anybody does,” Davis said. “I guess my statement to that was that I volunteered anywhere from 15 to 18 hours a day for three months and never received a penny.”

Williams said he consulted the county attorney and an ethics commission, and neither saw a problem with awarding the contract to Davis.

Gulf County awarded an identical one-month, $14,468 contract -- this one for monitoring beach pollution -- to Florida Eco Services, a company founded days after the rig explosion by Patrick Farrell, whose wife is on the board of the local Chamber of Commerce.

“It sounds like a bias, and it is, but I’m glad people in Gulf County got work and actually had the ability to feed their families,” County Attorney Jeremy Novak said. “I don’t see it as profiteering. I see it as obviously doing what you can because what you’re doing for a living isn’t available to you.”

This story was originally published April 12, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "BP money buys Gulf Coast millions in gadgets, cars."