President Obama used General Services Administrater Martha Johnson, who just resigned over a lavish conference, to describe his ideal “work culture” in the same year that Johnson presided over the now-infamous conference.
“It’s about creating a culture where, as Martha Johnson puts it, work is what you do, not where you are,” Obama said at the White House Workplace Flexibility Conference in March 2010. “In the end, we believe all of this isn’t just about providing a better work experience for our employees; it’s about providing better, more efficient service for the American people,” he said moments earlier.
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In October of that year, the GSA spent over $800,000 on a conference for 300 employees that included such eccentricities as “a clown, [and] a mind reader” in Las Vegas. Employees made a rap video joking they would “buy everything your field office can’t afford . . . Donate my vacation, love to the nation, I’ll never be under OIG investigation,” House investigators have since discovered.
Johnson resigned this week.
