GSA vs Las Vegas

Update: 6 June 2013.

Alert consumers of the daily news will have noticed that it is currently the turn of the Internal Revenue Service to be the fish in the barrel in the sights of Congress.  Press accounts of the IRS conference peccadilloes, while objective enough, seldom tell the whole story.  The agency's fatal error was to hire conference planning firms, which were obviously steeped in the way of business groups when gathering somewhere to schmooze without their wives, and not prepared to steer enthusiastically naive civil servants away from the fatal shores of perkdom.  The double standard gets 'em every time!

Some 300 employees of the Federal General Services Administration partied in October, 2010, in Henderson, Nevada, near Los Vegas, on our dime. They spent $882,751 on travel, food and lodging, $4 shrimp and $7 sushi, a clown and a clairvoyant (who failed to predict any fallout), a farewell banquet (beef Wellington) and the like.

What happened in Vegas didn’t stay there. A new 19 page report by GSA’s Inspector General – see GSA’s web site -- told all. The director of GSA, one Martha Johnson, fired two culpable senior subordinates and resigned the day before the report hit the fan. Others were disciplined.

What on earth were they thinking? Well, it’s a tradition. Since the early 1990's GSA’s Western Division has held a bi-annual moral building conference in October, probably to spend end-of-year money on something. As every federal worker knows, money not spent in one fiscal year doesn’t carry over. Instead, it goes back to the U. S. treasury and budget cutters cleverly double down by clipping next year’s budget by that same amount.

The 2010 conference planners were told to “go over the top.” Some did.. Bad idea? Read on and decide.

The President is outraged. Congress plans a hearing it is so outraged.. Columnists and bloggers write in outrage. The public is outraged, I am outraged and no doubt you are too.

Only Las Vegas isn’t outraged. It is conflicted, snickering one moment and worried the next. The last time this happened was in 2009. A relieved bunch of bankers celebrated survival with bail out money from the U. S. Treasury. President Obama complained and Las Vegas suffered when other more prudent conventioneers canceled.

Much like the bankers, the GSA miscreants are being punished for what is a moral lapse only because they are public servants spending tax dollars coerced from our wallets. Deliberately don’t pay our taxes and we may do time. Cars, though, are somehow different. Never mind that we have to have one, we decide when and what to buy. Jail is never mentioned if we walk away.

Therefore, profitable car dealers can party all they want at Vegas-like venues. The price of cars goes up accordingly, but since buying one is our choice and not a tax that is A-okay.

Public utility services – water, electricity, etc. – fall in between.. If utility suppliers party so exuberantly that word gets out, they may get a rate increase reduced, but top bosses aren’t fired.

There seems to be a law at work here. Our tolerance for having our pockets picked varies inversely with our sense of choice in the matter. Public money spent frivolously is an outrage, while private funds so spent rank as an indulgence when not counted as a just reward.

GSA’s band of revelers did nothing that would raise an eyebrow if done by a convention of corporate sales types. Their hosts thought them rather restrained. Naive even. No strippers. They even paid for their own booze and flew coach. Some of the upper echelon copped to lavish suites usually home to high rollers and CEOs. For shame. The rest made do with a $93 a night maximum for rooms at a resort 16 miles from the Fremont Street Experience. The 4-star hotel’s minimum is advertized as $95 nightly for a two night stay. It’s nice, but it’s not Aspen or Davos.

It’s not even Las Vegas, where GSA did not return in 2011. No word on this year.