WASHINGTON, D.C. - In 2011, NASA booked a flight for Ames Research Center Director Simon Pete Worden to fly first class from Washington D.C. to San Francisco. Cost of the one-way ticket: $14,773, versus the $189 average coach fare. Although the trip is reported in NASAs annual travel disclosure, the agency now says the flight never happened.
Worden, meanwhile, says he did take the flight. He explained by email to Scripps News that the trip included substantial foreign travel, and that he was authorized to fly first class for medical reasons. Yet, NASAs annual report accounting for its first and business class premium flights during 2011 includes no reports of foreign travel for Worden that year.
NASA is trying to resolve many of these kinds of disparities as it sorts out what it calls widespread errors in travel disclosures to the General Services Administration of its premium travel, according to Elizabeth Robinson, the space agencys chief financial officer. The errors date back to at least 2009, she said.
Weve identified some cases where there are inaccuracies and we are being very forthright about that and we are addressing those inconsistencies, said NASA communications director David Weaver.
Like many federal agencies, NASA must disclose all upgraded flights yearly. Those tickets often cost thousands of dollars more than coach fares.
NASA neglected to disclose an entire years worth of upgrades in 2012, and faced no repercussions. The agency is in the process of completing that report now.
The problem of lax oversight is not unique to NASA. Dozens of federal agencies regularly ignore requirements to disclose spending on premium fares, according to records recently released for the first time by the GSA. The agencys annual reports on premium travel reflect the ticket upgrades of 75 agencies from fiscal years 2009 to 2013, and indicate that 54 failed to file reports at least once during that period.
Scripps contacted all those agencies and received a mix of responses.
This is really embarrassing to admit thisbut no one here was aware of the provision, said Peg OLaughlin, spokesperson for the U.S. International Trade Commission. We are aware of it now and we plan to fully comply going forward. The National Science Foundation said it recently submitted a missing disclosure for fiscal year 2013 and is working on its report for 2012.
Eight other agencies contacted by Scripps said they would immediately begin disclosing their premium travel records. Eleven agencies disputed GSAs records and said they had filed on time.
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