The Hill News

The investigation into the 2010 Las Vegas General Services Administration (GSA) conference has exposed a wide range of indefensible and intolerable practices and actions. Efforts to hold the agency and its senior management accountable are still ongoing. Inspector General Brian Miller testified that his office has asked the Justice Department to investigate “all sorts of improprieties” . . . “including bribes, including possible kickbacks.”  According to testimony, most of the contracts for the conference were not competitively bid as federal rules require. 

Jeffrey E. Neely, one of the executives under investigation in the scandal, told investigators that he believed it was all right not to get competitive bids because he was paying for quality. Robert A. Peck, one of the senior GSA executives forced to resign was head of the Public Buildings Service in his second term of running the department.

Since the GSA, with 12,600 employees in 1! 1 regional offices and main offices in Washington, DC handles much of the government’s procurement, these revelations have raised a host of additional questions about how contracts are let, whether taxpayer dollars are being efficiently use, and about fairness in the letting of contracts and hiring.

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