Ballantine and I went to college together, which is to say, we attended it at the same time and were in several of the same classes. The last I knew, he was in the Senior Executive Service with GSA Region 9, which is out on the west coast. So I hadn’t seen him in quite a while and was rather surprised to find him in the Round Robin Bar yesterday evening.
After a few minutes catching up on the last fifteen years or so, I finally asked the obvious question, that being what brought him to DC.
“The truth is,” he confided with a knowing wink, “I wangled a transfer, to the Public Building Service in the GSA Headquarters building down on F Street, near the White House.”
“You left a GSA position in California,” I inquired, amazed, “to come live here in Washington?”
“Yep,” he confirmed. “They’re about to clean house in Region 9, and I didn’t want to get caught in the spit storm.”
“Because of the congressional investigation of that regional conference you folks held in Las Vegas back in October of 2010?” I asked. “The event GSA Region 9 managers attended at the M Resort Spa Casino?”
“Uh-huh,” he confirmed, “that one.”
“I can’t help but wonder,” I declared, “how you guys in GSA Region 9 management concluded that it would be a good idea to spend taxpayer money at a resort, a spa or a casino, much less at some place that claims to be all three at once?”
“They had the best comp offers for the bigwigs,” he shrugged. “Free luxury suites, free room service, complimentary stacks of gaming chips, the works. I’m telling you, I was on the planning committee – which is why I got the hell out of Dodge as soon as the spit hit the fan, by the way – and those reps from M Resort Spa Casino really wanted our business, badly, I tell you; they needed it to survive. Times were incredibly tough for the hospitality industry in 2010, particularly in the Las Vegas area.”
“Well,” I allowed, “seeing as how GSA Region 9 spent eight hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars on the conference, I guess you did your part to sustain the local economy through hard times.”
At that Ballantine threw a cautious glance around our table and carefully lowered his voice. “Don’t tell anybody, Tom,” he murmured, “but Region 9 actually spent a hell of a lot more than that.”
“You mean,” I pressed, “that spending seventy-five thousand dollars for a ‘team building exercise’ to construct a bicycle; six thousand three hundred and twenty-five dollars on commemorative coins; eight thousand one hundred and thirty dollars on conference yearbooks; thirty-one thousand, two hundred and eight dollars on a reception party; one hundred and forty-six thousand dollars on room service and drinks; eleven thousand dollars on artisanal cheeses; and seven thousand dollars on sushi wasn’t a big enough waste of public money during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression?”
“That?” Ballantine sniffed. “Just the tip of the iceberg, actually. You’re aware, I’m sure, of GSA’s… um… tradition… of… let’s say… creative bookkeeping?”
“They’re as notorious,” I observed, “as the Department of Housing and Urban Development.”
“No kidding,” he chuckled. “That’s why the Government Accountability Office never found out about the Cristal champagne fountains.”
“How many of those?” I wondered.
“Oh,” he sighed, knitting his brow in thought, “about a dozen or so, at the various private parties. The GAO only found out about the three semi-private in-room parties at fifty-six hundred dollars apiece. There were a lot more private parties in various suites and rooms, all off the books. And then there were the milk baths.”
“Milk baths?” I echoed, dumbfounded.
“There was a menu,” he explained. “Starting at about a thousand dollars to get your bath tub filled with warm pasteurized cow’s milk. Or you could get raw milk for fourteen hundred and ninety-five dollars, goat’s milk for eighteen fifty, sheep’s milk for two thousand and twenty-five, water buffalo milk for three thousand, raw camel’s milk for five thousand five hundred, llama milk for ten thousand or vicuña milk for sixteen thousand. All very soothing after a hard day of federal property management seminars, and great for the skin, too, especially those upscale milks.”
“Where did the Public Building Service manage to get the… uh… extra funding?” I probed.
“Piece of cake,” he snickered. “We did an end-run around the McKinney-Vento Act and sold a couple of decommissioned California post offices that were supposed to be used as homeless shelters. Plus we sold an abandoned light house in Oregon and six Titan missile silos in Idaho. I mean, forget the forty-four dollar breakfasts the GAO found out about – everybody got those. The real insiders were eating Kobe beef, antelope, white truffles, Beluga caviar… the whole nine yards, and washing it down with Samuel Adams Utopia, Shafer Hillside Select 2003 Cabernet, 1985 San Guido Sassicaia, 1976 Chateau Yquem, fifty-year-old Glenfiddich, XO Vieille Réserve and Barrique de Ponciano Porfidio tequila. Not to mention the entertainment…”
“It’s reported,” I interrupted, “that GSA Region 9 hired a clown and a mind reader to work at the conference…”
“Oh yeah,” he nodded, “but they only cost a couple of grand. The real entertainment, like the dog-and-pony show…”
“You mean,” I surmised, “one of those acts where puppies perform tricks on horseback under the direction of a pretty girl in a colorful costume?”
“No,” he corrected, “the pretty girl didn’t wear a costume. As a matter of fact, she didn’t wear anything. And the pony… well, it was more of a donkey, actually; and the dog was a Great Dane.”
“Oh my God,” I gasped, “a Mexican dog-and-pony show.”
“Exactly,” he confirmed. “Imported direct from Tijuana. And that cost about five grand for each performance, and we put on three of them. Then there were the Wedgewoods…”
“The who?” I interjected.
“Kind of like the Chippendales,” he explained, “but rauchier. The ladies – and some of the guys, too – just loved them. They ran about twenty-nine thousand – for five shows. That’s not counting the… ah… private performance-art sessions various members of the Wedgewoods held for some of the conference attendees, of course. Those GSA women execs, and, ahem… several of the men… ran up quite a bill, almost as much as the straight guys spent on… um… private in-room shows provided by… shall we say… exotic dancers? That stuff alone came up to around eighty thousand and change.”
“Sure sounds like GSA Region 9 is down with the party,” I observed.
“You haven’t heard the half of it,” he proudly volunteered. “Take the midnight dolphin swim, for instance.”
“Dolphin swim?” I repeated, thoroughly mystified.
“You take a large heated swimming pool,” Ballantine told me, “stock it with a bunch of bottle-nosed dolphins – you know, trained porpoises – and then you go in and swim around with them on a moonlit night. It’s a total blast, I tell you. Those dolphins are incredibly smart; and friendly, too – some of the males were a bit too friendly with the women, if you catch my drift. Not that anybody really cared. It was all in good fun.”
“An incredible amount of fun, apparently,” I ventured. “What did that little diversion run?”
“Oh, about one hundred and twenty grand, give or take,” he estimated. “But an experience like that makes memories that last a lifetime. And it’s also a great team-building tool. Well worth the money – particularly if it’s somebody else’s money.”
“True,” I agreed. “Things like that are always much better if they’re executed via exogenous funding sources.”
“Way, way better,” Ballantine chortled. “You’re light-years ahead of the game if you don’t have to pay for stuff like that out of your own pocket.”
“Right,” I concurred, “I mean, really, when you think about it, who in their right mind would spend their own money on a dolphin swim – or commemorative coins in velvet lined boxes, for that matter?”
“Or fire-walking?” Ballantine offered with a mirthful smirk. “There’s another perfect example. We spent what – oh, about nine thousand dollars on fire walks before the moonlight dolphin swim. It made perfect sense, since there was already going to be a huge fire pit to cook all those lobsters and suckling pigs for the GSA Region 9 Big Kahuna Executive Blow Out Hawaiian Luau. And we needed something to do for an hour after dinner before we went into the water, didn’t we?”
“Now, that’s what I call event planning,” I commented. “Coordinating all of the activities so they flow naturally from one to the next.”
“Thanks,” Ballantine smiled with satisfaction. “I put a lot of thought into getting everything exactly the way it should be. And you know, when you get right down to it, organizing things so they come out perfect like that, it’s actually pretty hard work.”
“How much was the luau, by the way?” I queried.
“About thirty-five grand,” Ballantine recalled, “for the basics, which included a luau pit crew, cooks, bartenders and wait staff, with mahi-mahi, opihi, wild Alaskan king salmon, abalone, Dungeness crab, marlin, swordfish, king crab, giant scallops, giant octopus, giant prawns, stone crab claws, mako shark, lamb chops, veal steaks, the suckling pigs, and all the trimmings – side dishes, open bar, tiki torches, the works; plus setup and tear-down for the luau pit – plus a full complement of Hawaiian musicians, drummers, acrobats and eight hula dancers. Flying in the Western Australian rock lobsters, getting genuine Japanese blue fin tuna, adding fugu sashimi and a chef certified to make it all ran an extra seven thousand.”
“Seems like a pretty reasonable deal for all that,” I suggested.
“I’d certainly say it was,” he vouched. “When you consider how much we got for a measly forty-two thousand dollars, how could anyone call that squandering? On the contrary, that luau was, in my opinion, extremely cost-effective!”
“But,” I posed, “in the last analysis, all completely over the top, no?”
“’Over the top’ was what the GSA Commissioner for Region 9 ordered,” Ballantine protested, “and ‘over the top’ is what he got! But now, there’s this… witch hunt going on, as if the kind of fun GSA managers have is more extravagant than… oh, I don’t know… the Army brass, for instance. How about them? Don’t they know how to party in the military, too? I don’t see Congress investigating their conferences or auditing their entertainment budgets. And you know what? There were an awful lot of people in the Las Vegas metropolitan area who were very, very glad that GSA Region 9 came to visit them in 2010, and I’ll bet you they wouldn’t mind having another visit, either!”
“Probably not,” I conceded.
“So,” Ballantine piped up cheerily as he glanced at our dwindling cocktails, “how about another round – or two – on me? Hey, I’ve got an idea – how about a nice, cold bottle of Cristal? Then a couple of their top-shelf single malt scotch – or maybe you’d prefer a snifter of their best XO cognac?”
“Why sure,” I readily acquiesced. “Thanks. That’s extremely generous of you. As a matter of fact, I’d say it’s right over the top.”
“Hey, no problem,” he assured me. “I’m putting it all on my GSA credit card.”