A Government Boondoggle

In October 2010, the federal government’s General Services Administration (GSA) held a lavish conference in Las Vegas, attended by 300 GSA employees. It cost $835,000 of taxpayer money. The costs included $147,000 for six planning trips by the organizers, $3,200 for a mind-reading psychic, $6,300 for a commemorative coin set displayed in velvet boxes, and, according to the Washington Post, $75,000 for a training exercise to build a bicycle, whatever that means.

Here’s why the organizers could plan such a boondoggle. Any exercise of good judgment by GSA employees is smothered by layer-upon-layer of executives, one above the other. In late-2010, at least ten layers of political and career civil-service executives stood between the individual who planned the conference and the GSA administrator far above. We’re talking executives, mind you, not the additional layers of clerks, secretaries, and janitors stretched out above and below.

This particular Las Vegas conference was eventually approved by an executive at a level higher than the planners. But the GSA administrator never got a chance to scrutinize the idea. That would have been too many levels higher.

Throughout the federal government, in fact, executives are densely packed. Mr. Paul C. Light, a professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, made a study of the changes in organizational structure of federal cabinet-level agencies. He found that, during the 48 years from 1961 to 2009, the number of executive layers more than doubled from 7 to 18. At the same time, the number of executives per layer soared from 451 to 2,600.

Do you think it might be time for government’s growth to be reversed? Why no, every one of these executives is bringing us hope and change.