Federal highway dollars pay for Southern Oregon bus shelters that cost as much as a house

You're correct that all of the details aren't there, but there is enough to make some general conclusions. For example, engineering costs were over $100,000 before any construction began. At five shelters, that comes to $20,000 per shelter just for engineering costs.

Now ... what would "engineering costs" include?

Having been a project manager myself once ... (In a totally different field, but I think some of the same considerations would apply.) ... these are the costs that anybody can throw into the project when they're running short in their own budget and they need to shed some costs. Got a doofus that can't tie his shoelaces but he's costing your department $15,000 a month anyway because you can't get rid of him either? Make him an "engineering consultant" for the bus shelters project. It's federal money!

In my own field (computer software development), IBM died (and then came back from the dead ... corporations can do that) of exactly this disease. Departments that did absolutely nothing lived for decades strictly on internal billing. Talk about $50,000 toilet seats! IBM had $5.00 punched cards. (There are a couple of thousand in a box.) So this kind of thing isn't limited to governments. It's a disease that is related to a lack of accountability in any organization. (The Catholic Church, for example, is rife with it right now.)

But all this analysis still begs the question. The question is, "What can we do to keep this kind of thing from happening?"

At first consideration, it sounds good. But think about it just a bit more ...

What you have actually proposed is a whole new layer of regulations. In general, I don't like the "libertarian" positions on things (the "no new government" crowd) but I can actually get on board their ship on this one. Adding another layer of regulation may prevent actual construction costs from exceeding "x" dollars, but like too much mayonnaise on a bologna sandwich, it will squeeze out somewhere else.

It seems reasonable to me that the excess "engineering costs" of this project were a result of the multiple layers of review required by multiple layers of government involved. And what about park pavilions? Entry way pergolas? Car park covers? Carried to a logical conclusion, this would actually be the "Full Employment Act for Bureaucrats". And I doubt that we will like the bus shelters we get as a result.

But don't take offense I didn't say I had a solution. In fact, if I have a point to make at all, it's that problems like this are a lot easier to criticize than they are to solve. I serve (on a volunteer basis ... I don't get paid) on the local Planning Commission where I live (not anywhere near Grants Pass, Oregon) and there are plenty of people who yell at me on a fairly regular basis. Part of my answer to all of them is, "If you don't like what I'm doing, you try it."