>inept

This is not a place where Hanlon's razor applies. Gov construction is rotten all the way through as matter of course and policy. High volume material industries are the easiest to commit fraud. Especially when the bureaucrat that signs the checks is never going to bother themselves by checking the real world shipments match to the bills. And that is just the easy part to check, checking for fudging numbers requires real work. Its been going on so long that the corruption is now part of the system. Its trivial to look at various costs and see the "$10,000" hammer all over the place. Or how instead of price going down at scale it goes up.

I probably will not convince you of this in a comment though, so do some research if you are interested.

> I probably will not convince you of this in a comment though

I mean your statement goes against all of my experience and the experience of every person I've met IRL, but I think you're confusing redundancy, rent-seeking, and (yes) incompetence with criminal intent.

Do you have any friends that work for a city? I'd just ask them about government work in general. The point of the domain is orthogonal to the business world, so you need someone to translate and explain what you're looking at.

Trivial example: You walk into a city garage and see mechanics working on their own vehicles. Are these government employees committing fraud?

The answer will *depend on local weather*. There's a direct connection between e.g. annual snowfall and paying people to sit on their asses, and you'll need to appreciate that connection to understand what's going on around you.