When You See Someone Striding Purposefully Toward You...

With the intent of doing you good, run away.
We are getting close to the end of the fiscal year. In government circles, that means it's the season to spend money before it disappears, because, in the perverse world of government finance, if you didn't spend every penny allotted to you then you obviously don't need as much next year. Government financial rules have mechanisms that specifically disincentivize good judgment and frugality. The rules also seem to push any sense of propriety or law out of peoples minds.
This weekend, a tornado of government good intentions descended on us with the mandate to find something, anything, to spend the last of their money on, and it absolutely had to be done right now. We worked right through lunch. I worked right through my half-day off. I got all of their projects ready, just in time, and all along, I knew it wasn't going to go anywhere. All of my time was going to be wasted, because the urge to do something good, blinded them to what was right, or at least
what was legal.
Today, when the do-gooders have gone, and sanity has been allowed to return, it turns out that every project I worked up will likely be denied, because they tried to do an end run around a rule intended to prevent very large sums from being spent without a high level review. There isn't anything wrong with any of the individual projects. Each one on its own merits is a good thing and could probably be justified and approved, one at a time, and spread out over the whole year. But all together, all at once, in a way that tries to dodge a pretty big rule, means that a lot of money wont get spent, and a bunch of government do-gooders are going to look like idiots.
It is also going to sour relationships that we have with the people that they made promises to that they were not allowed to make, and we are not allowed to keep. This will always happen as long as people who get to spend money are judged by how much they spend rather than by how well they spend it.