The performance of the GSA is Congress' responsibility

The investigation into the 2010 Las Vegas General Services Administration (GSA) conference has exposed a wide range of indefensible and intolerable practices and actions. Efforts to hold the agency and its senior management accountable are still ongoing. Inspector General Brian Miller testified that his office has asked the Justice Department to investigate “all sorts of improprieties” . . . “including bribes, including possible kickbacks.”  According to testimony, most of the contracts for the conference were not competitively bid as federal rules require. 

Jeffrey E. Neely, one of the executives under investigation in the scandal, told investigators that he believed it was all right not to get competitive bids because he was paying for quality. Robert A. Peck, one of the senior GSA executives forced to resign was head of the Public Buildings Service in his second term of running the department.

Since the GSA, with 12,600 employees in 11 regional offices and main offices in Washington, DC handles much of the government’s procurement, these revelations have raised a host of additional questions about how contracts are let, whether taxpayer dollars are being efficiently use, and about fairness in the letting of contracts and hiring.
According to the GSA website: “The ordering procedures applicable to the Schedules Program encourage ordering activities to consider and, where applicable, give preference to small businesses. The e-tools available to customers promote increased access to the small business community by allowing customers to search the various socio-economic categories. Contracting officers may make socioeconomic status a primary evaluation factor when making a best value determination.”

How well have these procedures been followed? Have minorities had access to GSA contracts? Have taxpayer dollars been protected? Congress needs to find answers to these questions. 

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) compared total annual compensation for federal and private sector employees with federal contractor billing rates in order to determine whether the current costs of federal service contracting serves the public interest.

POGO’s study demonstrated that the federal government approves service contract billing rates that pay contractors 1.83 times more than the government pays federal employees in total compensation, and more than 2 times the total compensation paid in the private sector for comparable services.

It is my belief that open, fair hiring and contracting practices in GSA would offer minorities significantly more opportunity. We in the Congress have the responsibility to continue to press for answers, and, where necessary, perform corrective action on GSA's performance. 

Rep. Davis represents the 7th District of Illinois.

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