AP analysis: Some federal oil spill spending could fuel criticism

The federal government hired a New Orleans man for $18,000 to appraise whether news stories about its actions in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill were positive or negative for the Obama administration, which was keenly sensitive to comparisons between its response and former President George W. Bush’s much-maligned reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The government also spent $10,000 with a Baton Rouge firm for just over three minutes of video showing a routine offshore rig inspection for news organizations but couldn’t say whether any ran the footage. And it awarded a $216,625 no-bid contract for a survey of seabirds to an environmental group that has criticized what it calls the “extreme anti-conservation record” of Sarah Palin, a possible 2012 rival to President Barack Obama. The contracts were among hundreds reviewed by The Associated Press as the government begins to provide an early glimpse at federal spending since the gulf disaster began in April. While most of the contracts don’t raise alarms, some could provide ammunition for critics of government waste. The administration has released details of about $134 million in contracts, a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars it has spent so far. BP has reimbursed the U.S. $390 million, says company spokesman Tom Mueller. The government sent BP a new invoice for $128.5 million last week. The White House is still deciding whether it will bill BP for spill-related trips by Obama and his wife, Michelle, to the gulf, including the president’s flights aboard Air Force One, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars each. See the full story here.