The Obama administration is urgently trying to stave off a $154.6 million disaster as a federally funded emergency communications plan neared collapse last week in America’s second largest city. This is the largest project of its kind ever attempted, and the model for a nationwide network with a future now clouded in doubt.

U.S. Commerce Department officials and Motorola Solutions executives repeatedly phoned and emailed key government officials across the Los Angeles basin in a desperate bid to salvage a regional government entity called Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System, or, as is known in bureaucratese, “LA-RICS.”

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker personally phoned L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti regarding LA-RICS. Pritzker’s spokesman declined to comment on the substance of the call.

Read the article “Another Expensive Stimulus Project on the Rocks” on ocregister.com.