GSA Roundup: Vegas out; doing great things; more bonuses; stolen iPods

The General Services Administration isn’t taking any more chances with Las Vegas: A one-day event called GreenUP 2012 Training Conference and Vendor Showcase, scheduled for April 25, has been nixed. A GSA spokesman informed The Washington Post of the cancellation.

In 2011, at another GSA-sponsored conference in Vegas, attendees were treated to a slightly more uplifting talk from former University of Notre Dame football player Rudy Ruettiger, according to the Post. The man whose story inspired the film Rudy (and who has had some run-ins of his own with the Securities and Exchange Commission) pushed his audience to do great things.

Those great things probably didn’t include doling out additional bonuses, however. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and Fox News, pulling from new details in an inspector general report, reported Wednesday that several executives in charge of planning the 2010 conference stayed an extra night in their Vegas suite at a severely discounted rate and received cash bonuses from GSA ranging from $500 to $1,000 as rewards for planning the conference.

Meanwhile, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has set an April 27 deadline for GSA to hand over more details about its questionable bonus program. Federal News Radio reports that McCaskill, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, has been questioning GSA’s Hats Off awards program since 2010.

That program has been suspended, according to Federal Times -- though not before hundreds of iPods (intended to be given to employees) were stolen from federal buildings, as reported by the inspector general.