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September 20, 2011
$16 Muffins, and Taxpayers Pick Up the Tab
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department on Tuesday came under criticism for "extravagant and potentially wasteful" spending on conferences at the end of the Bush administration and early in the Obama administration, including paying $16 per muffin and $8 per eight-ounce cup of coffee at certain events. 

"Some conferences featured costly meals, refreshments, and themed breaks that we believe were indicative of wasteful or extravagant spending - especially when service charges, taxes, and indirect costs are factored into the actual price paid for food and beverages," said a newly released report by the department's acting inspector general, Cynthia Schnedar. 

The report scrutinized spending at a sampling of conferences from October 2007 to September 2009, focusing on eye-popping calculations of food and beverage expenses. For example, at a four-day conference in November 2007 at the Grand Hyatt in Denver on the "Amber Alert" system for searching for missing children, taxpayers ended up paying $5.57 for each of 1,334 cans of soda. 

A five-day conference in August 2009 at the Capital Hilton in Washington to train immigration lawyers saved money by serving only snacks. But it still cost $4,200 for 250 muffins and $2,880 for 300 cookies and brownies, more than $16 a muffin and nearly $10 per cookie and brownie. 

The department said that it had brought such spending under better control in the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years, which were outside the scope of the audit. 

Moreover, the department told auditors that some food costs were exaggerated because of the way deals with the hotels were often structured: the hotels provided "free" meeting space in exchange for an agreement to use their pricey food and beverage services. 

Planners often did no cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it would have been thriftier to pay for the meeting space directly and obtain cheaper catering, the report said. But it noted that the conferences often ended up spending tens of thousands more on food and beverage than the minimum necessary to secure the "free" meeting rooms. 

Over all during the 2008-9 fiscal years, the department spent $121 million to host or participate in 1,832 conferences. The report focused on 10 of those conferences that cost $4.4 million, and questioned $134,432 in spending. 

The report also criticized as "unreasonable" certain travel by planners. For example, a consultant in Anchorage was hired to help put on a 2008 Indian Nations conference in California. The consultant billed $3,454 to make the 2,400-mile trip three times. 

While the department largely agreed with the report's findings and recommendations, it said it had been reasonable to hire the Alaskan consultant, who had special expertise in a variety of matters like Alaskan tribal culture and federal grant procedures. 

The inspector general previously criticized similar overspending in a 2007 audit. Department supervisors in 2008 and 2009 issued rules and memorandums to limit such costs. But the report found that several conferences put on afterward had nevertheless exceeded such limits. 

___________________________
Wayne A. Fox
wayne.a.fox at gmail.com
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