- General Services Administration, which held $820K conference in Las Vegas, now embattled with new scandal
- Documents state 95 GSA employees who work from home expensed $750K on travel in 9 months
- GSA looking into spending, but apparently not taking action to curb spending
Nearly 100 General Services Administration employees, many of them high-ranking, claimed more than $750,000 in travel expenses in a nine-month period, despite the fact that they were assigned to work from home.
The government agency, which was recently under scrutiny for an $820,000 conference in Las Vegas, is again being put under the microscope for its operations.
According to the Washington Post, which first revealed the wild expenditures, the agency is looking into the matter, but doing nothing to curb the outlandish spending.
Documents turned into the House revealed that 95 high-ranking employees within the GSA who were assigned to work from home spent $750,000 in travel expenses in nine months.
In response to the outrageously high travel expenses, executive Jeffrey Neely, who has since resigned amid the Las Vegas scandal, wrote in an email to a college: ‘OMG…Well this is a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.’
The Post reports that the so-called virtual workers were travelling to regional headquarters and to other events.
GSA spokesman Adam Elkington said yesterday that the agency is conducting ‘an extensive review’ on staff travel policies and deployment.
Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-California), meanwhile, demanded answers. ‘The American people have right to know that federal bureaucrats who enjoy the benefits of virtual work are eligible and responsible stewards of the taxpayer dollars that support the program,’ he wrote.
Twelve of the 95 ‘virtual’ workers claimed and received more than $200,000 in travel reimbursements between 2010 and 2011, the Post says.
