How else did the General Services Administration spend taxpayers' money besides an extravagant $823,000 employee “retreat” that took place in 2010? Plenty of people are poring over GSA Inspector General Brian D. Miller’s April 2 report, which led to the congressional hearings taking place this week.
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Aside from the fact that the GSA paid the housing expenses of Royal Productions employees twice (they were the vendor that supplied audio visual services); and that GSA “impermissibly purchased food for non-employees” – here are a few other specifics:
$137,000
Travel expenses and catering costs for eight different trips that GSA staff people made to both Las Vegas and Denver, including one trip where five employees visited nine different Vegas-area hotels
$75,000
Amount spent on team-building exercises that included building bicycles (the finished bicycles were later donated to a local Boys and Girls Club)
$58,808
Cost of “audio-visual services”
$31,208
The “networking reception” included 400 pieces of $4.75 “Petit Beef Wellington,” 400 “Mini Monte Cristo Sandwiches” ($5.00 each), 1,000 sushi rolls ($7 each), and 225 units of a $16-per-person “Pasta Reception Station”
$30,208
Amount spent on cocktail reception and award dinner
$8,000
Cost of conference souvenir books and yearbooks
$6,325
The now infamous commemorative coins in velvet boxes that were given to all participants
$5,600
Amount spent on three semi-private in-room parties
$3,750
T-shirts given to conference attendees
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$3,200
What the mind reader charged.
$2,781.50
Water bottles for the growing "goody bag."
$2,717.09
A private hospitality-suite party on the third night of the conference
$1,840
Vests for 19 “regional ambassadors” and other employees
$400
Cost of rented tuxes for three officials
$44
Cost per attendee for daily breakfast
