Why public officials hire outside experts

(1) They are not spending their own money. They are spending someone else’s money. (Ditto for many large corporations.)

(2) The experts do a good bit of the work the public officials would otherwise have to do themselves. Thus they do less work but still collect the pay for the work they passed off to the consultant (expert).

(3) They have someone else to blame if things go wrong, so they take less heat, now and upon the next election.

(4) They can squeeze the expert consultant for a political campaign contribution down the road. (The smart way to do that is to arrange cross-contributions with another politician who’s a friend. The expert contributes to your friend’s campaign, and then either your friend contributes to your campaign or else arranges to have one of his hired experts to contribute to yours.)

(5) The expert, by virtue of being from out of town, does not know them very well, so they are guaranteed someone who will appear to respect them (at that price, why not?) and to eagerly listen to what they have to say.