Your Tax Dollars on the Road

Today's newspapers featured an article about a GAO report on premium class travel by federal employees. Pretty scandalous stuff, until you wrap some context around the report, something our fearless reporter whose article was posted all over hell and back failed to do.

1 - On page 10 the GAO acknowledges that premium class travel represents <1% of all government travel and 7% of the airline cost.

2 - The government paid $230M for 53K tickets for premium class travel out of a total of 3.4B over the period being studied - 9/2005 thru 7/2006.

3 - GAO did a statistical sampling of all trips in which at least one leg of the trip was premium class. Based on their audit they estimated the amount of travel that was likely unauthorized or unjustified. Their sampling had an error range of +/- 10% or less, not real comforting to me.

Point being that the instances cited are not numerous when mapped against the total picture although the breathless headlines are suggestive of it being otherwise.

That said, I am all for hanging the transgressors out to dry, and pages 21-28 of the report gives specific examples, including 4 Presidential appointees (imagine!), 4 members of the Senior Executive Service (who are careerists and know better), and an Assistant General Counsel (regs must not have been written in sufficient legalese to be comprehended). All of them need their heads handed to them on a platter and it could be very entertaining.

It is particularly galling to read that the Department of Treasury, which is one step over my agency, is a transgressor. Of all the departments that should be on its toes, I would expect them to lead the way in that regard. Sadly, they aren't. Those of us who travel for the government and abide by the Federal Travel Regulations do not need this kind of nonsense in the funny papers. That 15% of the travel was performed by Executives just sets my teeth on edge. The folks who lead at the top are held to higher standards and for good reason. I hope they are held accountable for failing to uphold the public trust as they swore to do when they took their oath of office.