NASA Procurement Pays Gourmet Prices for Hotel Snack Food

This is actually a pretty standard practice. Most conference venues of that size require that you use their in-house catering (and require food service) as part of the contract for the meeting space. And that catering is usually jaw-droppingly expensive. The quoted price is about right. Presumably, the venue factors all this into their pricing model. You might also be surprised to know that at such meetings the display booths and such can't be offloaded and unpacked by NASA personnel, we usually have to pay the teamsters union to do that.

Actually Keith, meals aren't itemized on expense reports. A Per Diem rate is determined based upon the location of the travel, so it doesn't matter whether they ate at McDonalds or Ruth Chris.

Editor's note: yes, and that means that they get per diem on top of the $66 of meeting snacks - all at government expense

No doubt that NASA wastes a lot of money on conference and training travel but I suspect it is no worse than any other government agency. It's allowed and budgeted.

Well, having done a bit of travel for a NASA contractor, travel accounting is supposed to reduce the amount of M&IE (i.e. per diem) for each catered meal. So you're not supposed to get a conference supplied breakfast and a full days per diem.
Don't know what to say, other than NASA is one big contradiction.

Having been both participant and organizer for various events, I agree with CB450SC. Most venues are tightly closed shops. You show up and have to pay whatever they want to charge you, and they charge you a lot for everything. I would be complaining about these venues, many of which are municipally owned.

Good comment on this topic from the OrlandoSentinel.com comments section:
"Again, a shallow look at the available information. The costs are high – but that is what it costs to have a meeting at a hotel that can support a large meeting. Now, I have NEVER been to one of these meetings but I know people that routinely go. The cost covers mostly the space – the food is overpriced for sure but most of the cost is for the hotel workers. We could say that all Federal (and State and local…) meetings must be held in a local gymnasium, but that decreases productivity. I would like to see a comparison between what the government spends (admittedly it is public money) and what corporations spend (and that is deducted as a business expense!).

Sure we need to keep an eye on what is spent, but I do not begrudge people who travel to large, boring meetings and get a muffin. It is unfair to expect them to meet in a high school gym. They need chairs and tables and a large facility with bathrooms.

People also criticize Space Flight Awareness meetings and I have been to two of them. They are very reasonable expenses for people that have worked hard and sacrificed."

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2010/03/watchdog-nasa-paying-sky-high-snack-prices.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+news%2Fspace%2Fspace_blog+%28Space+Blog+The+Write+Stuff%29

NASA makes that deduction also.

Far too many conferences, workshops, retreats are held in a location where everyone must travel.

How about holding some of these at NASA Centers?

Some of this is waste, plain and simple.

Meetings are rarely held at the centers themselves due to the increased hassle with security issues. Admittedly, the quoted conference seemed to consist of NASA employees, who might all have the new unified badges. At both centers I have worked there used to be a temporary guest badge, and in the morning short-term visitors (contractors, folks from other centers) lined up at the guard shack to check in and get issued one. Those disappeared post-9/11, and now all visitors who don't have permanent badges get guest escort badges. Which means they have to be escorted everywhere behind the fence, even to the bathroom.

What's the big deal? When you don't have to turn a profit and it's not "your" money you can spend as much as you want. Besides what other "business" sends over 300 of its employees to one conference?

I thought attendance at conferences by NASA employees had been canceled due to the budget crisis. When did this get turned back on?

And how many of the Goddard Space Flight Center (just a short drive from Baltimore) people spent the week staying at the Hilton?

The argument for using commercial space services just got a bit stronger.

This is much ado over nothing. If you hold events at hotels, the hotel decides the catering firm available, as does the Smithsonian when you rent a museum for a reception. Don't like the vendor, or think their costs for pretzles and soda are too high? They'll tell you to go someplace else so fast it will make your head spin.

NASA employee attendance at conferences was not ever cancelled. There was a congressionally imposed limit of five million dollars but this was thankfully later rescinded as being much too little. We are required to interact with the public through the science community, public media, and educators at conferences to inform on the results of our investigations. When you read about some new and interesting finding from NASA and other scientists, it generally comes from conference presentations, often at the larger meetings. We are not allowed to travel to Baltimore or some other nearby place from the Washington DC vicinity and stay in hotels and eat per diem meals at taxpayer expense. Most of the attendees at these meetings are from universities, research institutes, and private companies doing government-sponsored research, and the meetings provide opportunities to interact closely with them. Personally, I am a dieter and I could live without the bagels and donuts. The trend on airlines is towards paying for food in transit and I see no reason why NASA should not expect the same, aside from providing bottles of water etc for speakers and so forth as a reasonable courtesy. The cost of food in conference facilities is indeed often high but there is no law against brownbagging to bring in your own food and drink from the local market.