Government waste

Let me start by telling you a quick story about my own experience with this topic. In the late 70s and 80s I succeeded to a contract with the Federal Government that insured the property rights into the Everglades in Florida, a project called the Big Cypress National Preserve. It was a large project and my contract included Monroe County, Florida parcels and some Dade County parcels. In approximately the middle of August of each year, I would start receiving envelopes, bubble envelopes, the kind you can mail eggs in..(well, almost) and in great numbers, with maybe a single sheet of paper in each envelope. I'm guessing that the envelopes themselves cost in excess of a dollar, let alone the postage to mail them. I asked a friend who was working in the project why I was receiving all of this expensive post and he just laughed and asked me if this was my first government project. It was, of course. He informed me that they had to spend all of their allocated monies before the end of the federal fiscal year, which ended on September 30th and this was just one way of seeing that all of the allocated funds were spent. If they didn't spend all of the allocated funds, there would be less money to spend in the next fiscal year.

Suggestion: How about an American solution? If an employee of a project of this kind makes a suggestion that will save the project money in the next fiscal year, why not give a percentage of one-half of the savings to the suggesting employee, maybe 25%, maybe some other percentage, and one-half of the remainder of the savings paid to the remaining workers in that project on a prorata basis, using their annual income vs the total paid annual incomes attributable to the project to figure the individual employee's share of the profits. The only condition being that the savings not impact the efficacy of the project and/or the completion date of the project.

What do you think??