NPR's Pam Fessler offers a look at how government contracts after Katrina may be costing a bit more than expected.

The saga continues of four huge, no-bid contracts awarded by FEMA right after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The agency gave Bechtel, the Shaw Group, Fluor and CH2M Hill contracts worth up to $100 million each to provide temporary housing for hurricane victims. FEMA said there wasn't enough time for competitive bidding, which presumably gives the government the best deal. In October, acting FEMA Director David Paulison told Congress he was "no fan" of such no-bid contracts and that these four would be rebid, this time competitively.

Well, seven months later, the four companies are still doing the work. And the size of the contracts has changed -- a lot. Shortly after the storm, the ceilings were quietly raised from $100 million to $500 million each. This week, it was revealed at Paulison's Senate confirmation hearing that the value of the contract with Fluor, a Texas-based engineering and construction firm, had been raised to $1.2 billion! That's a lot of money -- even for government contracts.

Paulison said FEMA plans to award the new, competitively bid contracts next month. In the meantime, FEMA has also awarded $3.6 billion in additional contracts to mostly small, Gulf Coast firms to take over trailer maintenance work from the four big companies. This was in response to complaints from Congress that not enough money was going to businesses affected by Katrina. But some Gulf companies that lost out on the bidding complain that not all the winners are local. In fact, four of the thirty-six $100 million contracts have gone to a California company called PRI/DJI, which is a joint venture between a minority-owned firm and Del-Jen Inc. Del-Jen is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fluor -- one of the big four.