Jottings By An Employer's Lawyer |
Monday, December 29, 2003
Hitting a Nerve, Or Just a Slow News Day - Reimbursement of Government Contractors Legal Bills
While you'd expect all corporate managements to spend lavishly on their legal self-defense, only a few have the privilege of using a key to the Treasury, namely generous 100 percent cost-reimbursement contracts, to make the taxpayer foot the bill.A little more rational is the point made by Steve Schooner, the co-head of the government procurement program at George Washington University Law School: There's a certain zero-sum game aspect to all of this. If one of these contractors performs only government work and we refuse to reimburse them for a legitimate cost of doing business - which many legal costs are - then we've put them in an untenable position where they're operating at a loss.And of course if operating at a loss, they are not likely to be a long term provider of services or jobs.
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