eventually see what's happened. i think there's a bigger problem here. i think there's a much bigger problem here. you see the people back home in my district, in pennsylvania, they may not be able to go on one vacation this year, not one, because of the price of gas. they're hardworking, blue collar americans. and to look at reports where the gsa spent $136,000 on a scouting trip before the conference is more than upsetting. and i'm just fortunate that i have the opportunity to be here today to get some of this off my chest. but most americans don't have that chance. they won't be able to stand here and get it off their chest what they feel. my one year here, i'll tell you, i've seen more waste, fraud and abuse in this government and

it's absolutely frightening. it's frightening the way our federal government works. and how we treat hardworking taxpayers' dollars and laugh. and those videos, literally make me sick. mr. peck, you said you told someone -- someone told you that the food at your party in your suite was covered. who did you tell? >> i don't recall exactly, mr. barletta. >> who told you it was covered? >> one of the conference organizers? >> who was it? >> i don't recall who it was. >> you don't recall who it was, you don't recall who you told. let's move on. who dpid you ask about the cost of room? >> i asked mr. neely and at least one other person who worked on the conference. >> and they told you there was

nothing wrong with it? >> either ms. daniels or one of the other people who worked on the conference. >> is this the only time you've witnessed any type of abuse in the gsa? this conference, was this the only example we could talk about today, or were there other time the other than this? >> as i said in my testimony, mr. barletta, this is the only conference i'm aware of in which this kind of expense, including preconference planning and all that was out of control. most of the gsa meetings and conferences i attended were focused on the business of the general services administration a and trying to do a better job getting real estate for the government. >> this happened -- and this is where i'm going about the bigger problem. this happened in 2010, and here we are in 2012 talking about it. but it didn't end there. that wasn't just a one-time deal here. just this year, just this year on february 4, regional

commissioners spent 17 days in guam, 17 days this year. who does that in private sector? who does that? who leaves their job for 17 days. that's not the way the private sector works. that's not the way real people work, real companies work. march 12, a meeting in napa. $40,000. why do we have to meet in napa? >> i believe you're talking about the same regional commissioner. i don't know. i'm not aware of the meeting. the senior management meetings i held were in regional meeting, many held in federal building conference rooms. we brought in box lunches. those are the kinds of meetings when necessary that i believe are the right kinds of meetings. >> and who reports to who? we can pound on mr. neely as well he should be pounded on, but who reports to who?

who overseas who? i ran a company, i ran a business, and i can tell you this would not have been going on and it wouldn't be two years later that we would be faulk talking about it. who oversees whom? who is responsible for whom? and who did you report to? at what point did you blow the whistle like ms. brita finally did? when do other employees in the gsa say this is wrong and something needs to be done. why are we here now trying to drag information out of people when most americans are barely making it. here's the bigger problem, here's a news release. big government doesn't work. it just doesn't work. this is not the way the private sector works. and i think what we need to be talking about is, what do we do instead of the gsa? because there's lots of abuse in the gs sa and lots of abuse of other government agencies throughout this government. and i believe the $822,000 spent

in las vegas by the gsa should be a farewell party. thank you. >> thank you, mr. barletta. mr. cummings? >> thank you. i thought it was the appropriate thing to do to let ms. daniels be excused. as a lawyer practicing for many, many years, it was the appropriate thing. the -- i want to follow up on some of the questions that mr. walsh was asking. mr. miller, you just restated something you said yesterday before the a government oversight and reform committee about mr. neely saying to one

witness that you interviewed that she would be squashed like a bug. let me read her entire -- where that -- the statement that she made. and i quote, this is a quote. she's been trying to bring this stuff up at the board of directors meeting and she promptly gets squashed like a bug when she brought up any kind of things concerning the conferences and the extravagances and the suites and the, you know, the hotel suites. because typically at a conference, i mean, the wrc was not a one-time thing where certain people got these very extravagant accommodations. does that sound familiar at all? >> yes, sir, it does. >> and the witness also said that, and i quote, the intimidation factor is pretty large, end of quote. mr. peck, let me return to you.

were you aware that mr. neely intimidated employees who reported to him? >> mr. conductings, i didn't know he intimidated employee, but i did, in fact, tell him on more than one occasion that i heard in his headquarters, as opposed to some of his field offices, there were people who were -- can who might be reluctant to give him bad news because he wouldn't take it well. >> what did you mean by that? >> i meant that -- this was hearsay, it's the kind of thing that as a manager you want to pick up, and i reflected it in his performance evaluation that i heard there were some managers who when people sit in a meeting and say gee, i don't think that's the way we ought to be operating, to be honest, i thought that we were talking about policy issues. i dependent b know we were talking about issues of real government waste and integrity.

but i heard this enough to -- >> i want to ask you some other questions. did any gsa employees tell you they're concerned about laughish excessive spending. >> no the that i recall, no. >> did any gsa employee raise concerns about mr. neely's retaliatory actions, whether through negative performance reviews, threatening to relocate them or other similar actions? >> no, sir, no to my recollection. i'm sure if i had, i would have taken action on it. >> this employee who was squashed like a bug was clearly right about all the lavish spending. what does this mean to you if it was not retaliation? >> that -- >> this isn't somebody who felt they had been sdwaushed like a bug. >> mr. cummings, i wouldn't split hairs over that. that's an intimidating atmosphere. >> and if somebody said that to you, you would have taken some

type of action? >> yes, sir. >> according to the inspector general's office, mr. neely may have spent $250,000 on travel over five years. mr. peck, as head of the public building service, did you track the travel expenditures of regional administrators or commissioners? >> mr. conductinummings, thank asking that. the way we tried to maintain managerial controls was benchmarking the travel, training and information technology expenses and other overhead expenses of one region over the others, balancing them for the amount of workload they had, their geographic dispersion and that's what, at least, the pbs assistant commissioner for financial manager was supposed to be tracking. i'm not able to access the information anymore. i don't know how it is that that kind of travel might have happened without showing up in that kind of of a review. >> you stated that mr. neely did a great, quote, great job for gsa over the year, end of quote.

you argued that mr. neely should receive a positive performance rating and you basically defended him. so i'm having great difficulty understanding your position. >> okay. >> let me finish. maybe you were not aware of what mr. neely was doing, or maybe you did not fully appreciate the level of abuse. and i agree with mr. walsh, this is abusing people, we're better than that. we're a better country than that and this is a better agency than that. but there's no question that mr. neely's actions were inappropriate and they should have been halted. and you were his supervisor, were you not? yes or no? >> no, sir, but i don't want to -- again, the way the gsa structure works, the public building, the regional commissioners did not report directly to the national commissioner. however, there is a very strong dotted line authority to the pbs

national commissioner. so certainly i could exert control when i felt it necessary. >> and you were head of public buildings, were you not? >> yes, sir, yes, sir. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. cummings. >> please tell you what you know about the 2010 intern conference in palm springs. i wonder if you can tell me, we heard about luxury suites and catered awards ceremonies. can you tell us about that? >> we're currently investigating that. the intern conference occurred between may 10 and may 14 in 2010 in palm springs, california. >> and what do you know about it so far? >> there were 150 attendees. and we are currently in the process of investigating it. there appears to be food served as well. food is also served at that conference and we're looking

into the propriety of that as well as other allegations. and mr. peck, i wondered how is it after your briefing by the i.g. in may of last year that you continued to allow lavish conferences to continue? >> as i testified, in fact, when i came back, after that, i canceled a number of conferences. before that even we had eliminate issed funding for the next western regions conference. i canceled a bunch of other national conferences which, by the way, i would not believe was lavish, but still given the budget environment, there was not enough benefit given the expense that they were going to make us have. >> mr. miller, wonder if if you can tell us some of the offsi offmeetings in region nine. how often would they have those site meetings? where would they go and how much would they cost?

>> well, the offsite meetings appear to be fairly regular. there was an offsite meeting at napa, i believe, at the end of march of 2012. that's march of this year. pbs region nine offsite leadership meeting in napa. food is reported to be about $40,000 for that particular offsite. we're also looking into allegations regarding other offsites and tours, like a jeep tour and that sort of thing charged to the federal government. >> that one in napa was just recently, wasn't it? >> in march, yes, of this year. >> thank you. mr. miller, i wonder if also the investigation that you've been overseeing with your hats off investigations revealed that more than $400,000 was spent in region nine alone for that awards program? . i know you found evidence of employee exchanging awards with one another and supervisors getting awards from subordinates.

what control, if any, were in place to prevent this? >> well, the problem with hats off was there was very little controls. gsa had a policy about all of the so-called reward stores and they were not being followed in region nine. we did our report, we did a draft report in may of 2011, along with the interim western regions report. our hats off report became final and in terms of providing discipline or adverse personnel action, the agency could have always taken adverse personnel action against the region nine regional commissioner based on the hats off award and based on other issues. and we always said even with the interim regional -- western regions conference report that the agency should take steps to prevent further waste. they could restrict its travel, they could restrict conferences, but they didn't. the only thing we said was with

respect to western regions, we were still investigating and that a technical adverse personnel action that would end up in litigation would not be a wise thing. but everything else was permissible. and adverse personnel action based on hats off was permissible. >> i no eyou began your investigation largely because of reports of stolen items. i wonder if you can tell us a little bit more of -- were you able to locate those. what happened to some of those stolen items and how did you find them? >> originally, i think around ho items were stolen. we began the investigation, we subpoenaed apple and we found there were about 115 ipods missing. apple provided us with some of the addresses for itune were being down loaded and one of the ipods was located in mr. neely's personal possession. the subpoena from apple told us that his daughter had been down loading itune and that sort of thing.

ultimately, there were just so few controls and so little restrictions preventing people from even going into the store and taking things out that we could not tell for sure who stole what from that story. >> my time is expired. >> mr. peck, my anger and frustration have finally gotten to a boiling point. february 10, the first committee hearing. became chair, sworn into office january 5 of last year. had concerns about this -- this agency. our first hearing february 10 where i first requested information from you. march 10, 2011, requested it again at a hearing.

may 12, requested it a third time. october 21, we sent a letter, a bipartisan letter from the committee on behalf of myself and ranking member norton. november 4, we held a hearing on the l.a. courthouse where we again requested the budget. december 7, written request once again on the administrative costs. february 9, we held another hearing requested pbs administrative cost information once again. march 20, another written follow-up letter to the december 7 ". march 20, again, we went to -- over the administrative cost information received from the gsa and let you know how lacking that very top line one page was. march 22, had another hearing where again we asked for the administrative costs. and march 30 this year, we had a staff meeting on the administrative costs. april 13, we now sent a letter

to the new gsa director mr. tangherlini. it's been a year and a half. we asked, sent letters to the committee, we demanded. kwhie are you hiding this information from this committee and the american public. >> mr. chairman -- >> you're not hiding it? you don't have the information? >> mr. chairman, i don't have access anymore to either your letters demanding information or our response. what i recall is that in december, this past december the committee asked for detailed information about overhead costs of the pbs nationally, the pbs headquarters in washington and the dmicommissioner's office. i believe we responded to that in february or march. there were a number of conversations had amongst my staff and -- >> were there details of these conferences?

>> sir, i don't believe that -- again, not having access to what you asked, i don't know if that was covered. i believe the requests were for spending on things like travel and training. >> did you give us any information on travel and training? >> as i said, mr. chairman, i no longer have access to what we gave you or not. but i believe we gave you an answer. >> i don't have it in front of me right now, but i can tell you for the last year and a half i've been requested the information. do you not remember any of these requests? i can name them off again. it's over a dozen times that i requested and you and i have had several conversations on cell phone where we discussed this issue. and i asked what is it going to take? do you have to have a letter from the committee? do we have to pass legislation demanding that we actually have a budget in place? >> mr. chairman, i'm fairly certain the agency provided you with information about the pbs budget. we provide it to the committees as a matter of course. i don't know what exact demands of information you're talking

about. >> we asked for one page. obviously there was no information on there on this las vegas scandal or any of the other trips that were planned. and we're going to go through all of those trips. but several dozen trips across the nation, lavish expenses. this is just the tip of the iceberg. but none of that information was in there. so the question is, if it wasn't in there, why are you lieding it from us? do you not have that information? >> mr. chairman, i don't have access to that information from gsa anymore. >> anymore. did you have information -- you were the top guy. did you have information that would show you the budget for mr. neely for region nine for the western regional conference or all of the conferences? >> mr. chairman, are you referring to a specific request that the committee gave for information about conferences? >> i'm trying to figure out, if you're the top guy at gsa, how did you not know this was going on in the western region or all of the region? >> mr. chairman, the allegations that i have heard so far today have been limited to region nine

and we've discussed when and how i became aware of the expenses of the western region's conference in october of 2010. >> so you did not know? >> with respect to other conference spending and travel spending in general, we were always taking a look at what expenses were across the various regions i was working. i was looking at very large numbers across the nation, not at specific conferences. except to the extent that nationally planned conferences, i did put under review in my office. partly in response to budget restrictions and partly in response to what we learned in may of 2011 about the western region's conference. >> well, you managed to filibuster long enough to get through my entire time here, but let me reiterate one more time exactly what this committee has requested and then demanded. first of all, we asked for the

number of employees of pbs as well as the number of authorized ftes, the amount of administrative costs, the break down of how much relates to the personnel costs, to the extent additional staff were hired for the purposes of the stimulus bill, how many staff were hired and costs associated with additional personnel. a breakdown of gsa occupied space for administrative purposes including square footage into the extent space is lease and the annual lease cost and an explanation of which account employee and administrative costs are coming from. we wanted a detailed budget for the last five years. not just about the obama administration, but the bush administration as well. five years of a budget. how much money has been spent in what areas, in what regions.

transparency for the american public. this is not a republican or a democrat issue. this is about an american issue of knowing what their government is doing. you've certainly went through my time here. but we have plenty of time today. i hope you had a good breakfast. because we're going to have a long time to go through this. you can take as length as uh you want on these questions but we're going to continue to go through them. >> ms. norton? >> mr. miller, i think it would be important for the committee to know as far as you know or prps ms. brita or anyone at the table may know whether or not what with efind in region nine has metastasized to other parts of the agency. i think it's fair to say there was building up over time something of an abusive culture, a region apart.

but we need to know whether this culture has spread to other parts of the gsa or whether you believe that it is essentially a region nine issue. >> that's exactly why the acting administrator is doing a top to bottom review so we will be able to answer that .question rather than intuitively come up with an answer or speculate. one of the reasons of doing a top to bottom rer view will be to answer that question. is this an isolated region nine issue or do we have a larger issue agency wide. we believe the review where we're looking at facets of gsa will be able to answer that question. >> mr. miller, have you seen any evidence outside of region nine? and are you, in light of what

you see in region nine, are you looking at other parts of the gsa at this time? >> we have continuing investigations into other conferences and other districts. we are looking at at least one other conference in another sdis trikt. district. but region nine say spending was part of the culture in region nine. we do have plenty of evidence regarding region nine. >> are you continuing their investigations into region nine? >> .yes, wre, we are. into many issues in region nine. other conferences. and we are looking at other conferences outside of region nine as well. >> the -- ms. dune, now, your title as chief financial officer

of the general services administration. the cfo for region nine apparently did speak up about the excessive spending. did any of his concerns or -- i don't know if it's a he or a she, reach your office? >> no, they did not. >> well, how could you be called the cfo of the gsa. i don't understand what your function is. >> the regional cfos in the public fwilding services report up through the regional commissioners of the service and do not report to the agency chief financial officer. >> so you never know anything about the financial matters in the regions? who does know then? >> the public buildings service has a central budget and

financial management division in their headquarters office, and that is the office that allocates the funds out to the various regions. >> you can see the difficulty i'm having with an agency, which is whose hierarchy, whose structure is very difficult to understand. do you think that that's -- do you believe that you were the cfo for the entire agency? what were you the cfo of? >> i believe i was the cfo of the entire agency, but unfortunately with a decentralized financial management structure in place, it was very difficult to have the visibility into the financial operations -- >> when did that happen? has that always been the case? >> it's been that way for a number of years. i joined gsa in september of 2010 and it's my understanding that it's been decentralized for at least a number of years.

and that's why -- >> is there a cfo at the public service building then? >> there was a position in the public building service that had carried the title of cfo. and i was very concerned actually about this decentralization because it caused a number of issues when one is trying to oversee the financial operations of the agen agency. and this is one of the reasons that acting administrator tangherlini has taken this issue -- >> how this agency is structured is a major factor if we're going to look at how to prevent this in the future. i have to ask ms. brita who apparently the moment she understood -- it must be the moment because the conference was held on -- in october and in early november ms. brita asked for a report. do you think ms. brita that

there would have been any way for you to have known or for the agency to have taken preventive action? the agency worked well with your ig when it came to action to penalize what had taken place and the penalties are still rolling out. but, of course, the taxpayers are going to want to know if there's anything that would have been done to prevent this problem in the first place. >> as allison said, under the decentralized structure, it would have been very difficult for people in the central office to have found out. >> so you then think that -- >> your time has expired. >> you then think the structure should be more centralized? >> yes, i do. and the acting administrator has taken steps to do that already. >> mr. barletta? >> mr. miller, you had said