The Justice Department Feast Like Kings
Lobster Dinners and The Finest Cookies
An internal Justice audit, released Friday, showed the Justice Department spent nearly $7 million to plan, host or send employees to ten conferences over the last two years. This included paying $4 per meatball at one lavish dinner and spreading an average of $25 worth of snacks around to each participant at a movie-themed party. More than $13,000 was spent on cookies and brownies for 1,542 people who attended a four-day “Weed and Seed” conference in August 2005
And a “networking” session replete with butterfly shrimp, coconut lobster skewers and Swedish meatballs at a Community Oriented Policing Services conference in July 2006 cost more than $60,000. The report, which looked at the 10 priciest Justice Department conferences between October 2004 and September 2006, was ordered by the Senate Appropriations Committee. It also found that three-quarters of the employees who attended the conferences demanded daily reimbursement for the cost of meals while traveling. The most expensive conference on the list was a $1.4 million meeting, in Denver in May 2006, to discuss Project Safe Neighborhood. Ironically, the cheapest meeting on Fine’s list was the only one held overseas: $181,648 to send FBI agents to a conference in Cambodia in March 2006. For more info about the audit.
