WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley today said that the General Services Administration (GSA) will begin posting on its website the reports it compiles on the travel of senior federal officials who use government aircraft. Grassley was notified of the change yesterday.
The policy change is in response to recent questions posed by Grassley to GSA administrator Denise Turner Roth. In a letter to Roth, Grassley wrote, “Given that use of government aircraft is financed by the taxpayer, there is no reason why these reports should not be accessible on GSA’s website for public consumption.”
“This is a win for transparency and the taxpayers who are funding these trips. Transparency leads to accountability, which is something the federal government could use a lot more of,” Grassley said. “Taxpayers deserve to know when their federal officials are using and sometimes abusing the privileges of the office they hold and the trust that has been placed in them. More agencies should learn from this type of transparency.”
Grassley said that the agency will begin posting travel reports that contain data and analysis on the number and costs of officials’ trips, agencies that submitted reports, costs by agency, and costs over time. According to the GSA, the fiscal 2015 report will be published in the next 30 days.
Grassley has a long history of oversight of federal officials’ travel. He began asking questions in 2008 about the use of the FBI jet by the Attorney General and other senior federal officials at the Justice Department. Following a Grassley request, the Government Accountability Office found that two FBI Gulfstream V jets that were justified to Congress by the FBI as critical to counterterrorism operations were mainly being used for “non-mission” flights. The 2013 report said that over a five year period between 2007 and 2011, the Justice Department spent $11.4 million of taxpayer money to fly the Attorney General and the FBI Director unrelated to the mission of their agencies.
Grassley also requested updated information on the use of FBI jets for these non-mission flights. New Justice Department data reveal that the FBI Director has taken 118 flights aboard FBI aircraft and the Attorney General has taken in 18 from Oct. 1, 2015, through March 4, 2016. The cost to the federal government for these flights was almost $3.5 million.
-30-
