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NEWS AND NOTES FOR THE MEETINGS AND CONVENTIONS INDUSTRY

High Notes The Parade of Nations at the World Choir Games. For more, see p. 24.

Over the Hill ‘My feeling,’ one CGMP said, ‘is there is an initial knee-jerk reaction from Congress.’

Government Meetings in a Post-GSA World

T

he General Services Administration (GSA) spending scandal is threatening to go viral with the recent announcement that GSA’s inspector general has been asked to investigate as many as 77

more conferences. Taxpayers and legislators already were fuming over revelations of

excessive spending at meetings hosted by GSA, such as the 2010 regional conference outside Las Vegas that cost $822,751 and led to the resignation of GSA Administrator Martha Johnson and other employees earlier this year. Hotels have been scrambling to fill guest rooms following the cancellation of various government meetings, including the 11,000 rooms left vacant when, in July, GSA pulled the plug on GovEnergy 2012 a little more than a month before the conference was scheduled to have

PCMA.ORG

Frozen The GSA announced

in mid-August that it would freeze per-diem rates for government travelers in fiscal year 2013 at 2012 levels; the agency reportedly had considered adopting an alternative methodology of calculating per-diem rates that would have cut them by approximately 30 percent. Read more: convn.org/rate-freeze.

+ ON THE WEB Convene wrote about the

initial effects of the GSA investigation into the 2010 Las Vegas meeting in our June issue, at convn.org/gsa-scandal.

SEPTEMBER 2012 PCMA CONVENE 21

PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER GRIDLEY

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