A few years ago, I concluded that FCRA interest rate re-estimates couldn’t be the basis of a violation of the ADA, regardless of facts and circumstances. FCRA law is black & white on the mechanics and that provides an ADA exclusion.
But now, after seven years of operations and 140 loan commitments, as well as large mandatory spending numbers surfacing, is there a basis to question whether EPA WIFIA can continue to ignore predictable funding losses when making a loan commitment? Specifically, the apportionment of discretionary funding at loan commitment, years before WIFIA cost gets enmeshed in FCRA re-estimate machinery? Is an apportionment that doesn’t consider likely borrower behavior adequate? There isn’t any ADA legal exclusion for this type of action, which involve what should be a good-faith estimate of all the costs of the loan.
In fact, such questions would seem to fall squarely under the ADA — you know, the part of the Act intended to prevent program and oversight staff willfully minimizing discretionary appropriations to make a federal program look better. Exactly the situation that the ADA was intended to prevent, no?
Gemini ‘discussion’ above — usual caveats apply.
There’ll be more on this. As noted in recent posts, I’ve pretty much given up any hope of EPA WIFIA reform. Fine, I get that Washington works to serve rent-seeking special interests, not abstract ideas of the ‘common good’. If they want their crony loaner, they can keep their crony loaner. But EPA WIFIA has got to follow the rules like everybody else, especially when the rules involve the allocation of taxpayer resources.