Broke: Las Vegas Nevada Police Department Faces $68 Million Budget Shortfall – Costs $525 MILLION A Year To Run Department

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA — The Metropolitan Police Department’s estimated $68 million budget shortfall next year has Sheriff Doug Gillespie preparing for a worse case scenario. He must find the money by April or be forced to make drastic cuts, including patrol officer positions, which are already at a bare minimum.

Metro estimates it will cost about $525 million to run the department next year. They have already scrapped two police academies, closed a substation and cut more than 230 positions in the last two years.

Gillespie detailed to the police commission how serious the situation is, calling on help from the City of Las Vegas and Clark County. In 60-days, he wants to know how much the department will get from each entity, and he expects a financial tug of war.

“The city and the county have had to reduce service levels as well, eliminate positions as well, so none of these decisions are going to be easy,” he said.

The county says it has no more to give and that deeper cuts are inevitable. Uniformed officer numbers are already near minimum safety levels.

“You can’t reduce their resources and numbers below acceptable levels,” said Gillespie.

Another big reason Metro is in this bind is Clark County’s declining property taxes, which have seen a 36 percent drop accounting for nearly $61 million that normally would have been in the police budget. The sheriff plans to ask the Nevada legislature to re-allocate $54 million earmarked to hire new cops to help fill the budget.

One of the more surprising moments of the meeting was a $350 donation that got a standing ovation. Paul Jones collected soda cans and donated the money to the department.

“I heard bad things were going to happen. I wanted to help save people’s jobs and help donate money,” he said.

What’s inside his piggy bank may not be much, but Gillespie says the gesture gives him goose bumps. With the department facing one of the toughest financial binds since the 1980′s, Jones is just happy he can give some relief.

“Thank you for keeping the bad guys off the streets,” he said.

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General Services Employees Rewarded For Pissing Away Tax Dollars On Lavish Las Vegas Conference

WASHINGTON, DC – Awarding bonuses for wasting taxpayer dollars?

That appears to be incentive offered by the federal agency under fire for spending lavishly on a 2010 conference held near Las Vegas. The latest details from an inspector general report on the conference reveal 50 employees were given cash awards of $500 and $1,000 for their work arranging the now-infamous conference.

“It would also appear that a number of GSA bureaucrats who helped arrange the Las Vegas junket were handed cash bonuses for their work in wasting the better part of a million dollars,” Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said Tuesday.

Rep. Mica also revealed Tuesday that one high-ranking official spent an extra night in Vegas at taxpayer expense, even though the conference was already over.

Calling the new revelation the “icing on the cake,” Mica said the official paid only $93 for a fourth night at the Vegas suite, which costs more than $1,000 a night.

The rest of the cost of the room “was apparently charged to the taxpayer” he said in a statement.

Rep. Jeff Denham, chairman of a subcommittee on economic development, public buildings and emergency management, said adding “personal vacation stays in Vegas” to the spending by GSA on the Las Vegas conference was “outrageous.”

In light of the the scandal in the General Services Administration over the more than $800,000 spent on the 2010 event, the agency has made a shrewd decision about where to hold its next conference: not Vegas.

The GSA, the federal equivalent of the government’s landlord, had been preparing to return to the Las Vegas area, but the Washington Post reported that the upcoming conference, scheduled for April 25 at a Vegas hotel, has been cancelled.

Several agency employees, including its chief, already have lost their jobs over an inspector general’s report on the 2010 conference.

Music videos featured at that conference have more or less gone viral by this point, showing agency employees laughing it up while making light of the agency’s spending and internal investigations.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been releasing the videos as it launches an investigation into GSA spending following the inspector general’s report. The committee announced late Monday that it has scheduled a hearing for April 16, where Martha Johnson — until recently the head of GSA — has been invited to testify, along with the inspector general.

An agency spokesman told the Post that the acting administrator has promised greater scrutiny of any conferences “that involve travel or substantial expenditures of public funds.”

The conference that had been scheduled for later this month was focused on environmentally friendly products and services and was intended to bring together GSA employees and contractors.

The Obama administration has not attempted to defend the 2010 conference. Top Obama officials have condemned the expenses and pledged to implement protections to clamp down on wasteful spending.

The administration, though, has pointed to rising costs under the George W. Bush administration to suggest that the $820,000 Vegas conference could have been avoided — if the Bush-era GSA had acted.

According to figures obtained by Fox News, the budget for the so-called Western Regions Conference rose from $93,000 in 2004 to $323,855 in 2006. It then jumped to $655,025 in 2008.

But Lurita Doan, who headed the agency under Bush until her resignation in 2008, told Fox News that President Obama’s team is trying to “divert attention” from its own scandal.

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Fraud And Waste At US General Services Administration – Including $800,000 Las Vegas “Training Conference” For 300 Employees ($2,666.67 Per Person)

WASHINGTON, DC – An investigation by the inspector general of the General Services Administration found rampant abuse of an employee awards program of the agency’s Pacific Rim region, the same region that has come under fire for spending more than $800,000 on a Las Vegas training conference for 300 employees.

The report on the “Hats Off” employee recognition program, obtained by The Washington Post, found numerous violations of agency directives, theft and misuse of government purchasing cards in the maintenance of the awards program.

The inspector general found “significant control weaknesses in the Hats Off Program.”

The report found that in fiscal year 2009, Pacific Rim employees received $256 in awards and Public Buildings Service employees in the region averaged $328.

The budget for the program rose dramatically in recent years. In 2008, employees at the Pacific Rim region, which oversees federal property in California, Arizona, Nevada and the Pacific Islands, received $47,012 in gifts. The next year it increased to $211,842, then dropped to $134,596 by 2010. In 2011, the program issued $844 worth of awards.

Jeffrey E. Neely became acting commissioner of the region in January 2009, having been public buildings commissioner. Neely was placed on administrative leave for planning the Vegas training conference. Expenditures for the awards program dropped dramatically after the inspector general began his investigation.

The findings in the report include:

■ Employees associated with administering the Hats Off Program were in the top 10 of recipients.

■ Instances of employees swapping awards with each other and supervisors accepting items from employees.

■ One employee, whose name was redacted from the report, gave “out 635 awards to 113 individuals, totaling $3,175.”

■ The Pacific Rim region maintained an inadequate inventory system and meager security on the storage room that held the gift items.

■ Total employee awards exceeded GSA’s 4 percent cap on employee annual salaries. Awards for Region 9 employees also exceeded GSA’s limit of $99-per-item limit on gifts.

Five government-issued purchasing cards were used to make purchases for the online “Hats Off” store, the inspector general found. In four instances, holders split the purchases to circumvent the cards’ single-purchase limit, a violation of agency regulations.

Unidentified public building service card holders allowed others, including two student interns, to make purchases with the cards to buy items for the store, a violation of GSA regulations.

The employee awards program was founded in 2001 as a merit-based point system that would offer coupons that could be redeemed at the “Hats Off” store. Initially, prizes included GSA-stamped mouse pads and backpacks but eventually included electronic goods.

At the start of each fiscal year all non-supervisory employees received 40 virtual “hats” which would be given as peer-to-peer recognition. One virtual hat was worth about $5. Employees could not give hats to themselves, but the investigation found numerous instances of employees swapping hats with each other.

Items in the virtual store included 8G iPod Nanos (redeemable with 30 virtual hats) and Coby 7 Portable DVD Player Tablets (redeemable with 20 virtual hats).

The Pacific Rim region maintained a storage facility on the fourth floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco. A former GSA employee said items could either be redeemed physically at the storage space, or through an online mall.

The report cited significant security lapses with the storage room. Too many people had access to the space, and administrators often gave out the code to the lock. The office of the inspector general was first alerted to improprieties in the Pacific Rims region’s Hats Off program after more than 40 iPods were found missing and reported to the Federal Protective Service of the Department of Homeland Security. A further inquiry by the inspector general found that 115 iPods valued at $20,000 were unaccounted for and possibly stolen.

The Pacific Rim region organized the 2010 conference that cost $823,000 and included penthouse suites, a clown and a mentalist. GSA Administrator Martha N. Johnson resigned last Monday following revelations of the conference, and two of her senior assistants were fired.

GSA has since terminated the Hats Off program, an agency spokesman said.

The public buildings subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), will hold a hearing on GSA on April 19.

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