A Maryland school district wasted “millions of dollars” on electric buses that weren't delivered on time and were frequently out of service, according to an inspector general's report.
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) announced in February 2021 that it would replace 326 diesel school buses with electric buses “as part of our sustainability efforts,” Montgomery County Supervisor Megan Davey Rimalge wrote in a report dated July 25. The school board approved spending $168.7 million on the vehicles, plus “charging infrastructure and associated maintenance costs.”
The following year, then-Superintendent Monifah McKnight claimed that purchasing electric buses would “save over 6,500 gallons of diesel fuel per day and immediately reduce costs by 50%.” A state law enacted in 2022 will require school districts to purchase only electric buses starting in the 2025 school year, and MCPS plans to “go all-electric within 10 years” and help meet its “commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2027 and 100% by 2035,” according to the school's website.
Missing the bus
In March 2021, MCPS signed a contract with an electric bus owner-operator to supply the 326 buses needed over a four-year period ending in fiscal year 2025. The contractor, who will retain ownership of the buses, was to deliver each year's scheduled vehicles by Aug. 1.
“The contractor did not deliver the buses scheduled for fiscal years 2022 through 2024 by Aug. 1,” Rimarji noted. “Our analysis shows that for the first three years of the contract, the expected allocation of buses was not received until the third quarter (Jan. 1 to March 31) of each fiscal year, not the first.”
On top of that, the contractor has already informed MCPS that it will not be able to meet its requirement to deliver 120 buses for 2025, which is not surprising given that so far they have only delivered 16 buses for 2025. Rimalji said that “MCPS is in negotiations with the contractor regarding the remaining number of buses under contract and the delivery schedule,” but that “they are only expected to receive 30.”
One would think that MCPS would do everything in its power to get electric buses and save us all from “climate change,” but that's simply not true. The contract allows MCPS to terminate the contract if the vendor fails to deliver the buses on time, but the district “chose not to exercise” this clause and is instead “working to amend the contract to extend delivery of the remaining 120 school buses through fiscal year 2027,” Limarzi wrote. Additionally, MCPS' diesel bus contract allows the district to charge fees for late deliveries, but the electric bus contract does not. “Had MCPS followed the diesel bus contract model, it could have charged more than $1.8 million in fees to offset incurred costs related to late deliveries.”
Destroyed bus
Then there's the issue of immobile electric buses. “Mechanical or charging infrastructure issues prevented buses from running more than 280 times between February 10, 2022 and March 31, 2024,” Rimarji said. While the contract requires repairs to be completed within five business days, “more than 180 of those trips” were not completed. In fact, repairs are taking an average of “13 days per bus.”
MCPS' contract allowed the district to charge the contractor $100 per day for each day repairs were behind schedule, but did the district actually do that? Of course not! Limarzi confirmed that “MCPS has never charged the contractor any fees related to electric buses being unavailable due to mechanical or charging infrastructure issues,” thus relieving the contractor of $372,100 in damages.
Rimalge's office interviewed MCPS executives and found that “no one could explain why this fee was not imposed.” MCPS does not appear to see the need to maintain a contract provision it does not intend to enforce, and “going forward, newly negotiated terms will likely eliminate this fee entirely.”
Meanwhile, MCPS is asking the state for permission to spend $14.7 million to extend the life of existing diesel buses and buy 90 more.
Taxpayers sacrificed
Discovering all this, Rimalji led the district into his own trap.
MCPS’s financial manual defines waste as “the wasteful, careless, or unnecessary expenditure of MCPS funds or the consumption of MCPS resources resulting from poor practices, systems, controls, or decisions.”MCPS’s decision to not hold contractors accountable for the terms of their contracts and not include provisions to offset costs incurred resulted in millions of dollars in wasted expenditures.
But since MCPS is using taxpayer money, not its own funds, spending millions of dollars to give the appearance of doing something about the threat of global warming probably isn't a big deal.
After all, the problems with electric buses are now well-documented — many cities, from Wichita to Philadelphia to London, have found that electric buses frequently break down or suddenly burst into flames — but as the Daily Caller noted, “The Biden administration continues to push for electric buses and vehicles more broadly, including distributing or announcing plans to distribute about $11 billion in funding for states and schools to buy electric buses.”
These days it seems like “environmental” ideologues are in the driver's seat and taxpayers are in the back of the bus.
