bonus decision, i would not be here explaining about a bonus. i would not have made that bonus decision. >> this is a good point for us to transition back to me again and follow up on that same question. let me go through what you did know. you knew that they spent four times what they were budgeted. because it says that right here. you had this report. you discussed it with your staff. you discussed it with mr. peck. you knew they had 300 people that went to las vegas. you knew that they spent $250,000 on a variety of trinkets. you knew about the hats off program and all of the money that they spent there. you knew about the preplanning meetings and the dry run. meetings where 31 people went to a planning conference. 20 people, 8, 15, 65. nine different planning trips. you knew about the comped rooms in caesar's palace.

you knew about the comped rooms at the ritz carlton. you knew that there were many different individuals taking these trips. you knew about the venders. and the possibility of improprieties and kickbacks. you knew about the team building exercise. you knew about the clowns. you knew about the videos. you knew about the $75,000 for the bicycles. you knew that there was a legal question that was brought up and then swept under the table because they didn't want it in writing. you knew about the coins that were printed up for this, the $6,000 stimulus coins. you knew about the spending nearly $3,000 per attendee just for the one conference in vegas alone. you knew that they didn't follow legal requirements.

again, several laws being broken. you knew that this went well beyond neely. but i think that neely provides the best example of why this goes to the level of fraud, waste, corruption, and had he been here today, we'd have a lot more questions for him as well. but he has a good reason to have a lawyer. i've looked at both of this original a year and a half ago as well as the final draft. but i can tell you one thing is very clear to me, one thing is very clear to ms. norton and to the entire committee. i mean, it doesn't take a whole lot to look at all these various pictures, parties, see the birthday parties, see the

families and friends that are traveling, and understand that there's an i.g. -- the first i.g. investigation going on. may of last year you had all of this information that i'm holding in my hand right now that i just went through on a top line. i can tell you i wouldn't have had anybody traveling. i can tell you i wouldn't have given anybody bonuses. especially when the president that appointed you had a directive. and your chief of staff, michael robertson, lets the white house know last june, and you still allowed neely to take all these trips and you knew about it? how is that immediate action? i'm surprised that the administration, that the president didn't take immediate action.

i'm assuming that somebody in the white house, somebody in the administration said, hey, how is that i.g. report coming? that investigator come up with anything else? we saw a copy of this. it's pretty bad. if he's giving you regular meetings, i would assume the white house would have somebody going, oh boy, this is really going to look bad. maybe we ought to get some regular meetings too. if martha johnson isn't doing something about it, maybe we need to replace her. and if bob peck is not doing something about it, maybe we need to replace him. maybe we need to put mr. neely on administrative leave in may of last year rather than waiting until the american public finds out about it. nothing happened for a year? and you allowed all these trips to continue on? multiple conferences? i mean, i can appreciate mr. tangherlini coming in and suspending the 35 conferences

that are scheduled. how are they even scheduled? how didn't you stop those conferences? i'm amazed that with a recommendation from mr. miller that more wasn't done to stop this over the last year. mr. miller, i want to go back to something you said. you're going to be exhausted by the end of this week. in fact, i assume all of you will be. i don't know that -- i'm a freshman, only been here for a year and a half, but i have not seen four committee hearings on any topic yet. but in yesterday's testimony, mr. cummings, congressman cummings asked you a question. it took nine months to investigate. ms. johnson indicated that she was surprised it took that long. were you communicating with her regularly about the progress in

the investigation and you replied back, yes, we provided information, the briefing and i asked her to get a handle on the rc's travel. you testified to that yesterday. do you -- did you misspeak yesterday or are you misspeaking today? >> well, i must have misspoken yesterday. i specifically told the regional administrator in region nine to get ahold of his travel in august of 2011. i did brief administrator johnson in may of 2011 on the interim report. we went through the interim report. she saw the preplanning travel. i did tell her about the less than candid comments. of course, we also had the hats off report that she was fully briefed on. >> how often did you meet with ms. johnson? >> we met in may, may 17th, i think, and then we met again in august.

i don't think we met before that. >> i can't imagine you had any of these meetings where you didn't say, we have a big issue here. >> we met in august. i think maybe twice in august. >> and during that same period of time, were you also meeting with other people that worked in gsa? >> indeed. and my senior staff was in constant touch with senior staff throughout gsa. >> how often do you think you communicated whether it's between staff to staff or you with mrs. johnson? no matter what level, how often is it? >> oh, i think we communicate several times a week between our staff and staff at gsa. and i know that my deputy communicates regularly with the deputy administrator, and i believe they did so about this investigation. and i communicated with steve leeds as well about this investigation. >> did anybody from the administration ever contact you?

>> no one from the white house has ever contacted me. i have never spoken to them. about this report. >> so several times a week, the oig contacted gsa and let them know? as you found new stuff, did you let them know? >> no, because it's an investigation. and we need to keep the investigation confidential in order to do the investigation. when we contact people throughout gsa, it's about many matters. we're involved in audits. we're involved in many things. so the contact between my office and gsa are on many topics. >> let me understand the oig's -- my time is expired. i will come back to this. ms. norton?

>> thank you, mr. chairman. now, occasionally the stress of the -- the destress of the committee comes out. i think one of the members said, you know, we ought to just get rid of -- perhaps just get rid of gsa. well it's precisely because gsa serves an indispensable function in the government that this is such a serious matter. so we've got to do it the hard way. and i'm looking -- i'm trying to be as remedy oriented as i can. on the one hand, there are issues of misconduct. either the law enforcement system, our hearings will bring out some, or the system within gsa, now under mr. tanghalini, are going to ferret those out. but we're still going to be left with the existing structure.

i believe in good personnel. but i don't believe the government or any other agency or private business can always assure that there will be precisely the people in charge who will keep things going. so i am, therefore, looking very carefully at the structure. ms. johnson, the structure you found in place had been put in place by an acting gsa administrator. he is now on administrative leave because he was in real life a pbs commissioner. his name is paul prowty, i understand it. he is apparently responsible for

the present structure of the region at gsa. now the regional administrator is a political appointee. but under mr. prowty, that administrator apparently was made no more than a figurehead. you say you appointed ms. -- i forget her name. >> ruth cox. >> yes, the new administrator. but as it appears from his organization of the committee -- of the gsa, before his organization, or shall i say reorganization, the regional administrator had direct control over the two commissioners. the pbs commissioner, the fas commissioner. under his reorganization, that

was no longer the case. and you have the reporting straight up that we have talked about today. it looks as though this person you appointed was something like a figurehead just the way the cfo, also called a gsa cfo, was a figurehead and yet you kept this structure. this structure put in place by an acting gsa administrator when you could have looked at it and seen it seems to me that your own -- seems to me your own position had been weakened. remember he's a pbs commissioner. he makes sure that these people

report around the regional administrator and straight up to the commissioners, the respective commissioners. that means if i'm coming in, i'm looking at less authority for me because my own person there no longer has the authority that she had before. why did you accept this organization -- this form of organization which was not put in by a presidential appointee, but was put in by someone who acted for a very long period of time when there was no presidential appointee. in fact, he may have gone over into two administrations and left in place this structure that we have now with a series of figureheads including at the regional level where mr. neely was able to do his work when he was both regional administrator,

of course, and pbs commissioner didn't much matter because prouty before him had reorganized the place so that the regional administrator wasn't left with much authority anyway. now prouty is on administrative leave because he is implicated in what happened in region nine. could you tell us whether you're satisfied with the structure you found in place and why you left it in place? >> well, the structure that i found in place was one in which the regional administrators did the performance reviews of the regional commissioners. so in that sense, they were not toothless. they were not -- i can't remember the word you used. they weren't just figureheads. >> they did the what? i'm sorry. >> they gave performance reviews to the regional commissioners. the regional administrator had to review the regional commissioners. they signed off on it. they got input from the commissioners, but they signed off. >> so what did they have to do with budget? what did they have to do with

function? you know, this is where you understand line authority. >> this is the matrix, yes. this is the matrix because they would receive their budgets from their commissioners, but their performance review would come from their regional administrators who had the ultimate signoff with input from the commissioners. and the shift, as i understand it, the shift that happened was that the contracting authority, the head of contracting authority was moved from the ra to the regional commissioners and that was the change under paul prouty. should i have changed that back? i believe it's something we should have reviewed thoroughly. it had been in place for a couple years. frankly, there were so many other things that we were undertaking. it wasn't at the top of my list. perhaps it should have been. >> look what mr. prouty did. as acting administrator, he changed the agency so he went

back to his old position as pbs commissioner in the region with enhanced authority that he himself had made and your regional administrator had diminished authority and you yourself, therefore, had diminished authority. i have to say, ms. johnson, i think you were snookered by your own pbs commissioner. >> there's one piece that makes it a little difficult. i believe that the way to think about that contracting authority is either it came up to me through the regional admip administrator or through the commissioner. it was still coming to me. i don't know if it's six, one, half dozen or seven to five, but it was a shift and it still devolved up to me in terms of contracting authority. >> mr. chairman? >> it was still coming up to

you, but you were doing nothing about it. that's the issue here. that's why we continue to come back around on this issue. mr. miller, when you do an investigation and you come back with this preliminary report, what normally happens? >> this was an unusual report. we did the interim report so that we could stop some of the waste in the future. so it's unusual. usually when we do an investigation, we will complete the investigation, make a referral to the department of justice, and there's a criminal prosecution or perhaps a civil case. >> so as of may 3rd, you did a preliminary report. ongoing investigation. a couple of investigations now. but you did a preliminary report so that you could stop the abuses right there. >> correct. >> and so after may 3rd, you started having multiple conversations per week with gsa. either through you or through

your staff from everybody from mrs. johnson to ms. cox when she was appointed. how was it that the spending did not stop? how was it that the trips did not stop? >> when i say we have multiple contacts and we have contacts throughout my office, my senior staff contacts senior staff throughout gsa, it's on many different issues. on this particular issue because it's an investigation and because of the nature of it, we wouldn't be going out of our way to tell gsa people about this because it's an investigation. >> but you went out of your way in this case. you gave them a heads up. you let them know there was a problem here. you told them to get a handle on rc's travel. >> i told the regional administrator that in august. and we did the interim report in may.

to alert the administrator. >> you came back in december of last year. ms. brita alerted you to mr. neely's 17-day trip which he was taking his wife on. got the e-mails of the party they were going to have and -- >> it's the -- >> different places they were going to travel to. >> it's the other way around. we contacted ms. brita, the deputy administrator, about the travel and said, did you know about this travel? is it really necessary? and ms. brita contacted the regional administrator. >> ms. cox? >> yes. >> did ms. cox let you know the 17-day trip was going to happen? >> i did not know about the trip from either ms. brita or the inspector general or ms. cox. >> has ms. cox been fired? >> i did not fire her. >> has she been put on administrative leave? >> i do not know.

i'm not at the agency anymore. >> has she resigned? >> i do not know. >> mr. who was aware of the ongoing oig, investigation, has she been fired? >> no, she has not. >> put on administrative leave? >> no, she has not. >> she hasn't resigned? >> no, she hasn't. >> any reason to believe she was not aware of the may 3rd report? >> i'm still reviewing the outcomes of thenal sin analysis inspector general, of this hearing, and we're still undertaking personnel action. >> do you dispute whether ms. brita alerted ms. cox to the 17-day trip that was coming up? >> i have no reason to dispute that. >> is she irreplaceable? >> i have -- i haven't been there long enough to know when the staff is replaceable or irreplaceable. so that's part of the review i want to do.

understand who we have, what role they play, and how they can continue to serve. i believe that's the same day you resigned, mrs. johnson. this committee gets the information on april 2nd, or we get -- we called our hearing on april 2nd. and it wasn't until we called a hearing and prepared subpoenas before anybody -- any action was taken, a year-and-a-half prior to that was when you had the may 3rd report. what immediate action was taken? >> when we received the final

draft of the report from the ig, we spent some -- we absorbed it, we met with the ig further to deepen our understanding of the background evidence. we -- i called ruth cox in to begin some disciplinary activities. we -- i placed the regional commissioners -- i placed jeff neely on administrative leave, i placed the regional commissioners -- all four regional commissioners on administrative leave, ultimately. >> were you directed to do so? >> no. no. these were my decisions. i -- >> why didn't you make the decision on mrs. cox? what was different with her? >> i admonished all of the regional administrators.

i then removed the two people in the chain of command who were political appointees. ruth cox reported to steve leads. i removed steve leeds and i resigned. so i took out the senior people. >> ms. norton. >> mr. chairman, i only have one more question. i do want to welcome the seniors from cardoza high school who have come into the room. you -- it's rare for visitors to see a hearing in progress. i can't say this has much to do with the district of columbia. but mr. tangherlini is here, and i do want to say for the record that the president took action without hesitation. and the action was not simply to discharge some -- or indeed all of the highly -- high officers of the agency. the president also brought in

dan tangherlini, and i can say from my own personal experience that it was a -- an appointment made for this decision. mr. tangherlini has been the administrator of the district of columbia, a very big and complicated city. has done the same thing at metro here as an administrator, not only with impeccable management skills, but also impeccable ethics. you see what you have laid ourt for you to do. i have one question about these conferences. in one of my other committees, we are focusing on tele working, and we're having finally some progress in getting tele working. i don't know about teleconferencing, and i do want to -- say -- say this also for the record. as somebody who is -- manages

people right now, in the congress, and managed much more people, and propositions in my life, i value what face-to-face meetings can do. my own staff is in the same city. but the district office staff and their two district offices and the congressional office staff don't have face-to-face meetings that often, but they have telephone meetings, and, of course, it's a much smaller staff than you would in an agency. they have telephone meetings every monday morning. i would like to ask -- because i don't know enough about the value of these face-to-face conferences. but i would like to ask you, mr. tangherlini, since the conference is the vortex of this

problem, what criteria you will use. i know you don't know what you're going to do now in determining whether these face-to-face conferences serve a legitimate need and how much of the work that's now being done in face-to-face conferences do you think in light of the priority of the federal government and the administration is putting on tele working could be done with more tele conferencing. >> i have to say that tsa is already a leader in teleconferencing, tele presence, moving out on ideas such as webinars. that's one of the things we're asking ourselves to be, is more like gsa for gsa. and ask ourselves, can we challenge ourselves to use some of the technology we have developed, challenge ourselves to use some of the innovations that have come out of gsa over the last several years, and use this to overcome the costs

associated with some of the travel for conferences and training. and i will say that we believe that there's huge value in high-quality training, interaction between federal employees who are working on the same areas and ideas. when you're dealing with things like the federal acquisition system, you need to have skilled, trained people managing those resources. because literally, billions of dollars go through those folks. and so we want to make sure that they have the highest-quality training. so our chief administrative officer office, which had been set up under the former administrator, we have given extra powers to oversee these conferences, to oversee the training, so oversee the travel. and, in fact, i issued on april 15th guidelines on conferences and travel that ask those questions first. can they -- does this have to happen by actually having people come together? can we use federal facilities

instead of renting a conference facility to do this kind of training? and what is the value we're going to get out of these activities? >> thank you, very much, mr. chairman. >> mr. chairman, could i correct a couple of dates here? i just want to be really clear about the record. we put mr. neely on administrative leave on march 19th. i removed steve leeds and bob peck and resigned on the -- on april 2nd. i just wanted to be sure that's in the record correctly. >> thank you. on june of last year -- michael robertson is your chief of staff, correct? >> he was my chief of staff, correct. >> he wasly an son to the white house before that. >> he was in the policy shop

before that. >> he did work on senator obama's staff before senator obama became president obama? >> yes. >> did you ever have subsequent meetings with the administration? >> first of all, i learned that -- that yesterday in the testimony i did not realize he had informed anyone at the white house. >> did you ever inform anybody at the white house? >> we held meetings with the white house after we received the draft report. >> after may 3rd. >> so far? >> when the report came out last year. >> no. i did not talk to the white house until after the final draft report was delivered to us in late february. >> which was when? >> when the -- >> the final. >> the draft report came to us --