Throwback Thursday – In 1979, Dept. of Labor Never Completed a $529,000 “Census of Samoans” in Orange County

In 1979, the U.S. Department of Labor spent $140,000 on a never-completed census of the Samoan population of Orange County, California — almost $529,000 in 2021 dollars.

If that wasn’t bad enough, a local Orange County official said he didn’t care that it wasn’t completed, as the point of the study was to put unemployed Santa Ana residents to work.

For the wasteful and nonsensical spending, Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, gave the Department of Labor a Golden Fleece award.

“Not only has no final report been submitted — four months after it was due — but even the limited raw data supposedly collected cannot be found,” Proxmire said then. “The former head of the program is reported to now be in Samoa, outside U.S. jurisdiction, and authorities' attempts to contact him have so far failed.”

According to the Orange County Register, one local official said that he was not upset by the lack of any finished product to show for the money.

“The purpose of the contract was to provide employment and training to unemployed Santa Ana residents and a by-product of this was to be a study,” the official was quoted as saying. “Just because the study wasn't completed, I don't think it can be said the city got the raw end of things.”

Proxmire disagreed.

“This mindless method of spending is exactly why there is so much waste and so little accountability of government spending,” he said.

The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com