Costs Skyrocket  As DHS Runs Up  No-Bid Contracts
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The project started in 2003 with a $2 million contract to help the new Department of Homeland Security quickly get an intelligence operation up and running.
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Contractors scramble for a share of federal dollars in N.Va.
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Contract with Department of Defense is part of homeland security boom.
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A fee charged to airline travelers to help pay for airport security would more than double under President Bush's spending proposal for the Homeland Security Department.
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Home foreclosures have set a record in the face of a Fed request to avoid taking homes.
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A Nasdaq plan to increase listing fees while simultaneously offering more services has enraged some companies and raised antitrust concerns.
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The Senate Finance Committeeâs plan, which has no income cap to disqualify high earners from tax rebates, would cost more than the plan agreed to last week.
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More than 40 percent of Pentagon business, a total of $362 billion, has been awarded on a no-bid basis over the last six years.
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A Navy program to build a new combat ship to patrol coastal waters will face another cost increase, government officials acknowledged yesterday, a hit to the service's attempt to keep expenses under control so it can afford a larger fleet.
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A nationwide block of&#160;spectrum in the 700MHz band being auctioned&#160;by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission received a high bid exceeding the &quot;reserve,&quot; or minimum, price of $4.6 billion on Thursday morning.A block of eight licenses covering the 22MHz C block of spectrum being sold by the FCC received a high bid of $4.7 billion in the 17th round of the 700MHz auctions, completed early Thursday. The C block is the portion of the 700MHz band on which the FCC will require open-access rules, meaning the winning bidder must allow outside devices such as mobile handsets from other carriers and must allow users to run outside applications on the network.Some critics have complained that the&#160;open-access rules&#160;would suppress bidding on the C block, but&#160;Google has pledged to bid&#160;at least $4.6 billion on the C block. Bidding is anonymous during the 700MHz auctions, so it&#39;s impossible to tell which company has the high bid.Through the 17th bidding round, high bids on the entire 62MHz of spectrum being auctioned totalled nearly $12.8 billion. The FCC and U.S. Congress had budgeted the auctions to raise at least $10 billion, but many observers had expected the auctions would raise much more than that.One block of spectrum unlikely to reach the FCC&#39;s reserve price is the D block, a 10MHz band of spectrum that would be paired with another 10MHz assigned to public safety agencies. The FCC required that the winning bidder build a nationwide voice and data network to be shared between commercial users and public safety agencies such as police and fire departments.After 17 auction rounds, the high bid for the D block stood at $472 million, far short of the $1.33 billion reserve price set by the FCC. That bid happened in the auction&#39;s first round on Jan. 24, and there&#39;s been no higher bids since then. If the reserve price is not met, the FCC would have to re-auction the D block.Many members of the U.S. Congress pushed for a public safety network, after emergency responders couldn&#39;t communicate with each other during the 9/11 terrorists attacks and more recent disasters. Police and fire departments in neighboring cities often use different devices on different blocks of spectrum.Critics have pointed to an FCC rule for the D block saying the winning bidder would have to give up millions of dollars in a deposit if it couldn&#39;t come to an agreement on network design with the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST), which controls the public safety spectrum. Scott Cleland, founder of telecom analyst firm The Precursor Group, called that provision &quot;onerous.&quot;&quot;That is not a negotiation,&quot; said Cleland, speaking at a 700MHz forum Wednesday. &quot;Auctions are free markets, and people don&#39;t have to show up.&quot;The FCC may have to re-auction the spectrum without the reserve price and perhaps without public safety obligations, said Michael Calabrese, director of the Spectrum Policy Program at think tank the New America Foundation. The PSST could use its block of spectrum to negotiate service with the auction winner if no build-out rules are in place, he said.A PSST spokesman wasn&#39;t immediately available for comment on the bidding.
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Â· Cost of decommissioning up by Â£12bn in two yearsÂ· Auditors criticise 'stop and start' work on sites
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New facilities and competition for top professors have costs soaring vastly higher than inflation.
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Bidding reached $18.55 billion on  Friday in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's  record-setting auction of government-owned wireless airwaves,  but there were no new offers for two large, closely watched  slices of spectrum.
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The Pentagon&#39;s internal watchdog is looking into claims by a top Army contracting official that a Halliburton Co. subsidiary unfairly won no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars for support services in Iraq and the Balkans.
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The number of people living in the nation without medical insurance rose 2.9 percent to a record 46.6 million in 2005 as health-care costs climbed.
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Senator John Kerry accused the Bush administration today of steering lucrative no-bid contracts to the company.
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The contract will be initially valued at $80 million instead of the $2 billion estimate given for the six-year deal, officials said.