GSA Party Las Vegas 2010!!!
"Mr. Chairman, on the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my Fifth Amendment constitutional privileges," Neely repeatedly responded Monday to questions about the scandal
The basic principle could not be simpler: as Milton Friedman so often put it, no one spends someone else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. That applies in spades to government. -Roger Pilon 
You knew government bureaucrats were living large when they hired a medium. And this mind reader who helped government workers communicate with the dead was just the beginning of the scandal involving the General Services Administration’s $823,000 spending spree in Las Vegas. -Dana Milbank
According to e-mails discussed at the hearing, Neely had offered to pay for personal friends to come have a “blast” on the government’s dime. “I know. I am bad,” he wrote. “But Deb [his wife] and I say often, why not enjoy it while we have it and while we can. Aint going to last forever.”
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Jeff Neely, the embattled General Services Administration official at the center of a scandal over a lavish Las Vegas conference, was reprimanded in 2011 for appearing in a campaign ad for Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), documents obtained by Roll Call show. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel said Neely’s participation in the ad for Inouye’s 2010 re-election campaign violated the Hatch Act, but it did not discipline him beyond a warning.
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Well after an inspector general began auditing a lavish Las Vegas conference, Jeff Neely, who headed the General Services Administration’s San Francisco office, took his wife on a taxpayer-funded trip to Hawaii, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Neely boasted in a November 2011 email that the trip was a “birfday” gift. (Fiddy must be so proud.) His wife responded positively to the gesture. “It’s yo birfday … We gonna pawty like iz yo birfday!” she emailed to Neely. “All sounds good. Need to check date line … Do we fain or lose a day going to Guam? If so we will have to adjust sked.”
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GSA officials landed special deals with resorts that got them suites, where parties were held on the taxpayers' dime. There were missing electronic devices such as iPads purchased for prize ceremonies.
Committee members pointed out that Neely had 9 pre-planning trips for the Las Vegas conference and visited Hawaii for 9 days in October 2011 and four days last March. Miller referred Neely's case to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation, among others. The internal watchdog said he's investigating bribery and kickbacks and already has recommended criminal charges be filed. Miller said 115 electronic devices purchased for GSA prize ceremonies were missing, and one was traced to a daughter of Neely.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A fired General Services Administration official says he didn't know taxpayers would be billed $1,960 for a party in his luxury suite at a Las Vegas resort. Robert Peck said Tuesday he had paid for some food out of his own pocket and was surprised when additional food arrived — eventually paid for by taxpayers.
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The footage follows the release of a video clip featuring a GSA employee named Hank Terlaje at the same convention strumming a ukulele and belting out an ode to high-spending office culture... Roll like Neely. I'll never be under OIG investigation.
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The videos show "well-dressed employees singing Frank Sinatra, downing margaritas and making light of lavish spending," reports The Huffington Post.
"Mr. Chairman, on the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my Fifth Amendment constitutional privileges," Neely repeatedly responded Monday to questions about the scandal, which centers around about $830,000 in taxpayer dollars that was used for a three-day employee conference in 2010, as well as on mundane questions such as his former job title.
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A General Services Administration executive will assert his right to remain silent at a congressional hearing next week into the agency's lavish spending practices, his lawyer said on Friday. It was learned that the official, Jeffrey Neely, also could face a possible criminal investigation.
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Previously, Neely had told investigators that a $2,700 party he threw in his Las Vegas hotel suite was an employee-awards event, according to a transcript of the interview. 'This is an award recognition ceremony ....' Neely told an internal investigator. 'That's what this was. That's...not a Neely party right. I actually ... it was in a suite that wasn't even mine.' The investigator then confronted Neely with his email saying that he and his wife 'are hosting a party in our loft room. There will be wine and beer and some munchies....' There was no mention of awards.
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There was also the $75,000 bicycle-building exercise, the clown show, 1,000 sushi rolls at $7 a pop, $6,325 spent on commemorative coins, $8,130 for souvenir books and 300 helpings of “Boursin Scalloped Potato with Barolo Wine Braised Short Ribs” at $5 each.
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WASHINGTON - The head of the General Services Administration resigned from her post Monday, and two other officials were fired amid an investigation into excessive spending at a 2010 training conference that featured a clown, a comedian and mindreader, Federal News Radio reports. Martha Johnson, the GSA administrator, submitted her resignation on Monday, citing a "significant mis-step" at the agency to the tune of more than $800,000.
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Awarding bonuses for wasting taxpayer dollars? That appears to be incentive offered by the federal agency under fire for spending lavishly on a 2010 conference held near Las Vegas. The latest details from an inspector general report on the conference reveal 50 employees were given cash awards of $500 and $1,000 for their work arranging the now-infamous conference. "It would also appear that a number of GSA bureaucrats who helped arrange the Las Vegas junket were handed cash bonuses for their work in wasting the better part of a million dollars," Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said Tuesday.
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The practice of gaming the system in order to bill taxpayers for food at lavish conferences was so widespread within the General Services Administration that it became a "running joke" among certain employees, the GSA inspector general testified Tuesday. Inspector General Brian Miller, who blew the whistle on agency spending with a report on its $820,000 conference in Las Vegas, explained how leaders with the western region of GSA got around the administration's rule of not having food at conferences. The work-around was simple -- just hold an awards ceremony, and food would be provided at taxpayer expense.