Spending rules issued in the wake of the General Service Administration’s 2010 Las Vegas conference scandal capping how much federal agencies could spend on employee travel and meetings have been quietly softened in the years since the infamous gathering.
The Office of Management and Budget Wednesday said it would “entertain” requests from agencies to increase their travel expenses if officials could demonstrate new justifications that have arisen since the tighter rules went into effect in 2012.
“Travel is often necessary for federal employees to discharge their duties effectively; however as good stewards of federal funds, agencies must do all they can to manage their travel budgets efficiently,” OMB said in what it called a “clarification” of the 2012 guidelines.
The budget office released stricter rules on conference and travel spending after reports of a lavish GSA conference funded by taxpayers sparked public outrage and led to a series of congressional and inspector general probes.
Those 2012 policies compelled agencies to publish reports on every conference that cost $100,000 or more and banned agencies from shelling out more than $500,000 for any one event unless they obtained a waiver. Agencies also had to scale back travel spending to at least 30 percent less than 2010 levels.
But updated marching orders from OMB-stated agencies can ask to have those “baseline” levels adjusted if they can demonstrate “new mission-critical travel needs” that have surfaced since the 2012 rules went into effect.
The original rules established firm requirements as to which officials could review and approve plans for conferences slated to cost more than $100,000, limiting that authority to deputy secretaries or their “equivalents.”
OMB’s latest clarification allows those senior officials to delegate approval authority to “a level deemed appropriate by the deputy secretary.” Entrusting lower-ranked officials with the responsibility for reviewing conference plans ensures “that the approver is more familiar with the subject of the conference.”
The GSA was far from the only agency to come under fire for its excessive conference spending, however.
A 2010 conference in Anaheim, California for Internal Revenue Service staff cost $4.1 million and brought sharp criticism to the agency after an inspector general report revealed IRS officials had used taxpayer funds to hand out engraved pens, monogrammed bags, cocktails and more to the government employees who attended.
A senior Department of Health and Human Services official claimed accurate conference spending reports were not worth the effort to compile after an inspector general report uncovered millions in unreported expenses from the agency’s 2012 conferences.
Another inspector general report found the Department of Defense had no idea how many conferences it funded, let alone how much they cost.
