In Rural VA, MZM Center To Shut Its DoorsIt looks like one of MZM’s Pentagon boondoggles will shut down soon, the Roanoke Times reports today. It’s good to hear the DoD is pulling back from its MZM contracts, but it looks like bad news for the folks in the rural town that’s home to the operation.
The program — the Virginia-based Foreign Supplier Assessment Center — was created in 2003 by an earmark tucked into a classified appropriations bill by Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA), to be operated by MZM. He kept it alive with another earmark in 2005.
Before inserting the first earmark, Goode accepted many thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from MZM. Before the second earmark, he enjoyed the same largesse. In all, Goode took about $90,000 in campaign contributions from MZM president Mitchell Wade and other employees. Goode has since given the money to charity; Wade has pleaded guilty to bribing convicted congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Cunningham, of course, has gone to jail.
But here’s the curious, and sad, thing: Goode didn’t just fleece a few million bucks from U.S. taxpayers to give the military a facility they didn’t want. He also screwed his own constituents — the less-than-prosperous residents of Martinsville, Virginia.
In addition to his federal earmarking for MZM, Goode pushed the Commonwealth of Virginia and the town of Martinsville to give MZM incredibly favorable terms, as one blogger notes.
To be exact: the state of Virginia gave MZM $500,000 to locate in Martinsville, if they met certain criteria (which have they never completely met). But if the center didn’t perform well — as it appears, now, it never will — the city of Martinsville is forced to repay that money from its own coffers, not MZM.
That cruel twist, reports say, was Goode’s idea. Not that it’s affecting Goode: the latest polls show him with a double-digit lead over his Democratic opponent in the midterm election.
In his statement on the matter, Goode blamed “negative publicity” for the shutdown of the program.
