Government Contracts Commons^™

Slides: Perspectives On Water Management In Arizona, Kathy Jacobs

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Kathy Jacobs, Director, Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions (CCASS), Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science, University of Arizona

25 slides

Slides: Gwc Review Report, Larry Macdonnell

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Larry MacDonnell, University of Colorado Law School

12 slides

Slides: California's Bay-Delta Conveyance Problem: A Light At The End Of The Tunnel(S)?, Jerry Meral

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Jerry Meral, Director of California Water Programs, Natural Heritage Institute

8 slides

Slides: New Era Of Water Banking And Refined "Water Accounting", Bonnie Colby

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Professor Bonnie Colby, Departments of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona

23 slides

Agenda: Innovations In Managing Western Water: New Approaches For Balancing Environmental, Social, And Economic Outcomes, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Many aspects of western water allocation and management are the product of independent and uncoordinated actions, several occurring a century or more ago. However, in this modern era of water scarcity, it is increasingly acknowledged that more coordinated and deliberate decision-making is necessary for effectively balancing environmental, social, and economic objectives. In recent years, a variety of forums, processes, and tools have emerged to better manage the connections between regions, sectors, and publics linked by shared water systems. In this event, we explore the cutting edge efforts, the latest points of contention, and the opportunities for further progress.

Slides: Six Decades Of Texas Water Planning, Ronald Kaiser

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Ronald Kaiser, Professor of Water Law and Policy, Chair of Graduate Water Degree Program, Texas A&M University

32 slides

Slides: Urban Water Reliability And The Salton Sea: Can We Have Both?, Michael Cohen

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Michael Cohen, Senior Research Associate, Pacific Institute

29 slides

Slides: Moffat Collection System Project, Travis Bray

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Travis Bray, Project Manager, Moffat Collection System Project, Denver Water

45 slides

Slides: Ag Water Sharing: Legal Challenges And Considerations, Peter D. Nichols

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Peter D. Nichols, Esq., Partner, Berg, Hill, Greenleaf and Ruscitti, Boulder, CO

25 slides

The Green To Blue Pipeline: Defense Contractors And The Police Industrial Complex, Karena Rahall

Cardozo Law Review

Images of police in tactical gear, pointing automatic weapons at unarmed demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, represented a flashpoint in public awareness that American police are rapidly militarizing. Federal grants have been quietly arming police with tanks, drones, and uniforms more suited to waging war than patrolling the streets. As police have acquired more military gear, Special Weapons and Tactics teams and deployments have proliferated. Even small towns receive surplus military materiel to fight the "wars" on drugs and terrorism. In addition, police training uses a military approach that threatens to transform the traditional police mandate of protecting and serving into …

Putting An End To False Claims Act Hush Money: An Agency-Approval Approach To Qui Tam Prefiling Releases, Jeremy Johnston

Vanderbilt Law Review

The False Claims Act ("FCA") deputizes private citizens to combat fraud against the United States government by offering them a portion of the bounty.' This concept has existed in some form for hundreds of years-the strategy of "setting a rogue to catch a rogue." Medieval England used it in place of police forces. The American Colonies caught pirates this way. Even Abraham Lincoln protected the Union Army from faulty equipment by encouraging corrupt military suppliers to report one another. In modern American history, the FCA has proven extraordinarily effective at using this ancient tactic. The Act fines wrongdoers triple the …

Beyond Transparency: Rethinking Election Reform From An Open Government Perspective, Michael Halberstam

Seattle University Law Review

During the past decade, “transparency” has become a focus of democratic governance. Open government and right-to-know regimes have been around at least since the 1970s. They include measures like open meeting laws, campaign finance disclosure, lobbying registration, and freedom of information laws. But the Open Government projects— variously referred to as e-democracy, Open Data, or Government 2.0— have evolved into something new and different. They view transparency not primarily as a right to know, but as a condition for a more efficient, intelligent, and cooperative form of democratic government. This Article considers how various election reform projects fit with the …

Kicking Employers While They Are Down: Vicarious Liability Under The Anti-Kickback Act, Daniel Horner

Catholic University Law Review

The Anti-Kickback Act is one of the instruments the Government uses to punish and prevent procurement fraud. The Act creates criminal and civil liability for the use of kickbacks by government contractors. Specifically, the civil provision contains two subsections -- one punishing employees for their actions, and the other punishing employers under a theory of strict liability. In United States ex rel. Vavra v. Kellogg, Brown & Root, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that employers are subject to vicarious liability for their employees' violations of the first subsection of the civil suit provision …

The Revolving Door, Wentong Zheng

Notre Dame Law Review

The revolving door between the government and the private sector has long been presumed to lead to the capture of regulators by industry interests. A growing body of empirical literature, however, either finds no conclusive evidence of a capture effect or finds evidence of an opposite effect that the revolving door indeed results in more aggressive, not less aggressive, regulatory actions. To account for these incongruous results, scholars have formulated and tested a new “human-capital” theory positing that revolving-door regulators have incentives to be more aggressive toward the regulated industry as a way of signaling their qualifications to prospective industry …

European Community: European Commission And Denmark Reach Settlement Of Dispute Over Construction Contract Granted By Denmark To Six-Party Consortium In Violation Of The Public Procurement Provisions In The Treaty Of Rome., G. Brian Raley

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Participation Of The El Paso Construction Sector In Federal Contracting Opportunities, Ana Rodriguez Camargo

Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Quebec's Bill 1: A Case Study In Anti-Corruption Legislation And The Barriers To Evidence-Based Law-Making, Graham Steele

LLM Theses

Corruption is a significant problem around the world. Large-scale public works projects are especially prone to corruption. Much international effort has been devoted to fighting corruption, but the impact of these efforts is debatable. Public-sector procurement in the Canadian province of Quebec has, since 2009, been beset by scandal. After defeat of the Liberal government in 2012, the first bill introduced by the new Parti Québécois government was an anti-corruption measure. The heart of Bill 1 is a system by which construction contractors have to demonstrate "integrity" in order to bid on public contracts. Quebec's lawmakers could have looked to …

Proper Pleading Or Premature Proof? Rule 9(B)'S Particularity Requirement And The False Claim S Act, Fisher K. Law

Georgia Law Review

Many taxpayer dollars are paid to private contractors supplying goods and services necessary to carry out federal programs in areas like healthcare, defense, and education. These private contractors profit heavily from their dealings with the federal government, but unfortunately not all of these contractors are so patriotic. Indeed, some steal from the treasury by invoicing goods or services they did not actually provide. Congress attempted to reel in this dishonest practice with its enactment of the False Claims Act during the Civil War. To supplement the enforcement effort of the Department of Justice, Congress included a qui tam provision allowing …

Taming The Hurricane Of Acquisition Cost Growth – Or At Least Predicting It, Allen J. Deneve, Erin T. Ryan, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Christine M. Schubert Kabban

Faculty Publications

Cost growth is a persistent adversary to efficient budgeting in the Department of Defense. Despite myriad studies to uncover causes of this cost growth, few of the proposed remedies have made a meaningful impact. A key reason may be that DoD cost estimates are formulated using the highly unrealistic assumption that a program’s current baseline characteristics will not change in the future. Using a weather forecasting analogy, the authors demonstrate how a statistical approach may be used to account for these inevitable baseline changes and identify related cost growth trends. These trends are then used to reduce the error in …

Changing The Face Of The Earth: The Morrison-­Knudsen Corporation As Partner To The U.S. Federal Government, Christopher S. Blanchard

Dissertations and Theses

Beginning with reclamation projects in the western U.S., the heavy construction industry helped the federal government grow in size and sophistication in the twentieth century. The Morrison-­Knudsen Corporation throughout the twentieth century represented one of the federal government's favored contractors. Following western reclamation projects, the U.S. federal government then used contractors to help move the U.S. economy out of the Depression, prepare for World War II, wage the Cold War at home and abroad, and win the space race. Thus, at key stages in United States history we observe the necessity of the U.S. federal government partnering with the heavy …