Executive
Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday: Commerce Dept. Holds Multiple Training Sessions At Three-Star Hotels
In 1982, the U.S. Commerce Department spent $440,000 holding training sessions in three-star hotels. Another Golden Fleece.
In 1982, The Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency spent $138,000 – $440,000 in 2023 dollars – to hold three management training seminars at three-star resort hotels.
For this wasteful spending, Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, gave the Commerce Department a Golden Fleece Award. He gave awards to wasteful and nonsensical spending, eventually handing out 168 Golden Fleece Awards between 1975 and 1988.
According to the agency memo, the seminars would “ensure that ALL – repeat, ALL – agency personnel (from clerk typists to the senior executives) are ‘playing from the same score’ in the MBDA symphony! Put another way, we’ll all be marching to the same drummer for the first time in the agency’s history.”
The idea for the training sessions came after the inspector general of the Commerce Department issued a highly critical report about the operation of the agency responsible for assisting the development of minority-owned businesses.
After that report, the agency hired an outside consultant to plan and run the training sessions to help improve the agency’s function, Proxmire explained.
In a memo, citing management plans for MBDA staff, the deputy director wrote, “As you are all now aware, MBDA is moving in a new direction, symbolized by the Northbound Train!”
That June, 40 people attended a training seminar in Virginia. A month later, a memo from the agency’s deputy director explained he wanted top Washington staff to attend three sessions, one in Virginia and two in San Diego, while all other employees of the Washington office and all the regional offices would attend one or more of the sessions.
After getting word of the plan, Proxmire’s office contacted the agency, questioning the costs of all support staff attending the conferences. The inspector general, who earlier issued the critical report, wrote to the MBDA director, “I want to repeat and emphasize my concerns about your bringing in support staff to these seminars.”
The deputy director later dropped support staff attendance, and relocated the San Diego conferences to closer-by Baltimore. But the seminar sites were still held at three-start resort hotels
In the end, 177 people attended three seminars costing $138,000.
“I have no quarrel with an agency trying to improve its effectiveness,” Proxmire said. “But how many of these management training seminars must the taxpayers support before the MBDA symphony finally plays in harmony and the Northbound Train reaches its final destination?”
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
Adam Andrzejewski (say: Angie-eff-ski) was the CEO/founder of OpenTheBooks.com. Before dedicating his life to public service, Adam co-founded HomePages Directories, a $20 million publishing company (1997-2007). His works have been featured on the BBC, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, C-SPAN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, FOX News, CNN, National Public Radio (NPR), Forbes, Newsweek, and many other national media.
Today, OpenTheBooks.com is the largest private repository of U.S. public-sector spending. Mission: post "every dime, online, in real time." In 2022, OpenTheBooks.com captured nearly all public expenditures in the country, including nearly all disclosed federal government spending; 50 of 50 state checkbooks; and 25 million public employee salary and pension records from 50,000 public bodies across America.
The group's aggressive transparency and forensic auditing of government spending has led to the assembly of grand juries, indictments, and successful prosecutions; congressional briefings, hearings, and subpoenas; Government Accountability Office (GAO) audits; Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports; federal legislation; and much more.
Our Honorary Chairman - In Memoriam is U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, MD.
Andrzejewski's federal oversight work was included in the President's Budget To Congress FY2021. The budget cited his organization by name, bullet-pointed their findings, and footnoted/hyperlinked to their report.
Posted on YouTube, Andrzejewski's presentation, The Depth of the Swamp, at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar 2020 in Naples, Florida received 3.8 million views.
Andrzejewski has spoken at the Columbia School of Journalism, Harvard Law School and the law schools at Georgetown and George Washington regarding big data journalism. As a senior policy contributor at Forbes, Adam had nearly 20 million pageviews on 206 published investigations. In 2022, investigative fact-finding on Dr. Fauci's finances led to his cancellation at Forbes.
In 2022, Andrzejewski did 473 live television and radio interviews across broadcast, major cable platforms, and radio shows. Andrzejewski is the author of The Waste of the Day column at Real Clear Policy. The column is syndicated by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owners of nearly 200 ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX affiliates across USA.
Andrzejewski passed away in his sleep at his home in in Hinsdale, Illinois, on August 18, 2024. He is survived by his wife Kerry and three daughters. He also served as a lector at St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church and finished the Chicago Marathon eight times (PR 3:58.49 in 2022).
Waste of the Day articles published after August 18, 2024 are considered posthumous publications.
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