- Editor’s note: Please see this update to the story for more information that came out after this study was published. In short: Those muffins weren’t $16.
- Playing to the biases people have about government: The Justice Department obviously has a very important job that requires them to herd a lot of cats into a lot of cages. However, when those cats are government workers and those cages are hotels like The Capital Hilton, a swanky hotel one block away from the White House, the costs leap quickly. Hence this report, which rips the wasteful spending happening all over the place. This, friends, validates every person who complains about wasteful spending. Just to give you guys an idea:
- $121 million spent on 1,832 events in 2008 and 2009
- $600,000 the amount spent on planning services for just five conferences
- $490,000 the amount spent on food and beverages for ten conferences
- $16 the amount spent on muffins — EACH — at one conference
- $8 the amount spent on each cup of coffee at another conference
- $32 the amount spent on snacks — per person! — at one conference source
- » Absurd consulting fees, too: Why did one consultant charge $3,454 to fly back and forth between a conference site three times? And why didn’t he just go once? And why did the planners have to travel from across the country to stay at the hotel where they’ve had the conference numerous times in the past, incurring $29,000 in charges in the process? Do phones not work? And why did it cost the OCDETF Conference in D.C. $102 per person to feed 1,348 people over four days, incurring over $137,000 in charges? And why wasn’t there oversight on all this until after the study was implemented? It makes our head hurt.
Posted by Ernie Smith •
Permalink