Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett is showcasing a car-sharing program to the Obama administration that effectively has cost taxpayers about $280 hour for county employees to rent a car.
As a follow-up to phone conversations with Vice President Biden and White House aides, Leggett and county officials provided 25 pages filled with examples of local “best practices” that could help the Obama administration make government “more effective and efficient in making the changes that America needs.”
The county’s car-sharing program, a pilot program that started this year, has been expensive and inefficient.
So far, the county said it has paid Enterprise Rent-A-Car more than $200,000 for the program that has been used for about 750 hours, essentially a rental rate of $280 an hour.
Leggett’s letter to the White House also boasts that the county is switching from ultralow-sulfur diesel to biodiesel fuel for its heavy equipment.
But the county has scaled back that switch because ultralow-sulfer diesel is cheaper and because the biodiesel caused algae to grow in its storage tanks.
In the car-share program’s first three months, the cars were used seven times for fewer than 30 hours, county records show.
In July, the county paid Enterprise about $30,000 to rent 30 hybrid cars that were used for 79.5 hours by 11 county employees, county records show.
A comparable private car-share service, such as Zipcar, costs Montgomery County residents about $10 an hour.
The county pays Enterprise an all-inclusive $1,100 a month each for the 30 hybrids, regardless of use. County officials have said that they plan to scale back the number of cars available because of employees’ meager use.
Despite the high costs and low use, officials have defended the program, saying it is gaining more users and has allowed the county to save more than $500,000 by not having to replace as many aging cars in the county’s fleet.
Leggett’s spokesman, Patrick Lacefield, said the program was a “work in progress” that was part of a broader county effort to cut emissions and costs. He said it was appropriate to include the car-sharing program and the use of biodiesel as part of the county’s “best practices” list to the White House.
“Even your best practices, there can always be flies in the buttermilk,” Lacefield said.
