Data reveals no-bid contracts for hurricane clean up

Eric Lipton and Ron Nixon of The New York Times used federal contract data covering hurricane response to show that "more than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition ... provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse." FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers have spent the most so far. (Note: For other stories looking at what went wrong in the Katrina disaster, please see IRE's Katrina resources page.)