I've no doubt there was a chance to save some money, but saying this guy replicated an $86M system is quite a stretch. He managed to replicate the code to OCR

I've no doubt there was a chance to save some money, but saying this guy replicated an $86M system is quite a stretch. He managed to replicate the code to OCR the plates in a somewhat controlled condition, and use existing networks to access an existing web service. It's not going to work in low light conditions traveling at 55MPH with plates at varying distances while simultaneously fighting off attacks to jam/DOS/insert false results during a power outage. Additionally there's going to be a backend to store and process the data for whatever purposes. We really don't know much about what the scope of the $86M project was, and may have included a lot of unrelated things also.