Fifteen federal employee conferences held in 2013 at a cost of nearly $2 million weren’t reported properly by Department of Labor officials and they also misrepresented the results of their efforts to reduce travel and promotional expenses by 20 percent, according to the agency’s internal watchdog.
The conference disclosure requirement became law in 2013 following revelations of a costly 2010 event for General Services Administration officials made famous by a Facebook photograph of a smiling agency regional administrator sipping champagne in a Las Vegas bathtub.
Coincidentally, the person in the bathtub, former GSA Regional Administrator Jeff Neely, pleaded guilty earlier this week in federal court in a plea agreement stemming from the Las Vegas conference.
The Labor Department inspector general reported Thursday that officials there failed to post descriptions of five of the most expensive conferences on the agency’s website, as they were required to do by a 2011 presidential executive order.
Most of the conferences were unreported because officials claimed they thought the events were exempt since they were related to training, even though the 2013 law states “that conferences include training activities,” the inspector general said. Only three Labor Department training conferences were properly reported.
Federal employee conferences that cost more than $100,000 must be approved by senior officials and posted on the hosting department’s website. Also, all conferences that cost more than $20,000 must be reported to the inspector general.
Thirteen of the conferences weren’t reported to the inspector general within the 15-day requirement contained in the 2013 law and two more, costing $131,000 and $225,000 respectively, weren’t reported at all.
The latter two events were among the five not posted on the Labor Department website.
Officials said they reported four conferences after the 15-day requirement because they wanted to report them simultaneously, and they said it was only “an oversight” that four other events weren’t reported as required.
Officials also told investigators they didn’t seek higher approval for a conference costing more than $238,000 because a similar event had been previously approved.
In response to the inspector general, the Labor Department’s chief financial officer promised that officials would comply with all reporting requirements for employee conferences in the future.
Investigators also found that costs of a conference that was held without prior approval in 2014 were 51 percent higher than planned. The event was predicted to cost around $242,000, but ultimately was more than $380,000.
Officials blamed expensive airfare, the “significant number of travelers” that were lodged an extra night for a kick-off meeting, and because 10 more managers were added to the attendance, the inspector general said.
The misrepresented travel and promotional cost reductions were made in response to a 2011 presidential executive order that required agencies to cut spending in those and other areas by 20 percent by 2013. The department reported that it slashed the costs by $85.5 million, well over its goal of $61 million, but the inspector general said only some of the mandated reductions were implemented.
“By including only certain categories, DOL could potentially manipulate its calculated cost reductions,” the inspector general said. Department officials thus “could not ensure the $61 million target accurately represented a 20 percent reduction” required by the executive order.
“Given that the travel cuts are well above the mandated reductions, to further identify the combined costs would not be a prudent use of government funds,” department officials claimed.
