Employees of the Upper Cumberland Human Resources Agency “squandered $2 million of taxpayer money on travel expenses, lavish meals and entertainment and other luxuries,” Tennessee Watchdog reports.
The expenses had absolutely nothing to do with the public interest, according to State Comptroller Justin Wilson, who investigated the spending by the Volunteer State government agency.
The state agency serves 14 counties in the Cumberland Plateau region with a 63-member board comprised of various county and city mayors and derives the vast majority of its funding from state and federal governments.
Tennessee Watchdog’s Christopher Butler left a message seeking comment from Executive Director Luke Collins, but Collins was unavailable, according to one of his staff members.
Among the findings of Wilson’s investigation were these, according to Butler:
* Agency officials spent nearly $60,000 on a trip to Washington, D.C. in March 2011 to meet their Congressional representatives. Investigators found numerous receipts, apparently for 30 agency officials, employees and guests. On several occasions, officials charged more than $3,000 per meal for lavish dinners including alcohol. On a single meal at Washington’s Oceanaire Seafood Room, 34 agency guests consumed nearly $5,000 in food, including more than 30 alcoholic beverages. The costs of such extravagant meals were typically split between two agency credit cards, ostensibly to conceal the high costs.
* During the same Washington D.C. trip, the agency spent $1,255 for officials, employees and guests to attend a performance at Ford’s Theatre, $289 for a visit to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum and $284 for a trip to Mount Vernon.
* Agency officials made frequent trips to Nashville each year, where they charged expensive meals and alcoholic beverages on agency credit cards, all to entertain agency board members and legislators. In February 2010, for example, the agency spent $2,361 for 25 guests at Morton’s Steakhouse, dividing the dinner check among three agency credit cards.
* In August 2010, seven guests were treated to $85 in pre-dinner cocktails before an $807 dinner at Morton’s at the agency’s expense. In October 2010, the agency spent nearly $10,000 to have its annual meeting in October 2010 catered and more than $8,500 for a staff holiday party in December 2010.
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