Taxpayers were taken for a ride recently by a $300,000 trip that was supposed to help tenants of federal housing developments learn to become more involved in housing decisions but was instead an overpriced vacation with an inappropriate political agenda.
The promotional pamphlet for the event, attended by nearly 200 tenants and officials of federally funded public housing developments and four HUD officials and their secretaries, billed it as "an unforgettable vacation."An audit by the Department of Housing and Urban Development inspector general is turning up evidence that the trip - 97 percent of which was financed by taxpayers - was indeed much more a vacation than a learning experience.
Most of the planned events at the El San Juan Casino Hotel and the Sands Beach Resort in Puerto Rico were social or political.
The address of a speaker at one session was blatantly political, and another amounted to a "fund-raising solicitation to purchase a computer for the National Tenants Organization (NTO, a private group) in the name of Jesus."
Participants were busy with casino gambling, snorkeling, dancing and exotic shopping as well as political rallying against Republican public housing projects.
It gets worse.
Though HUD officials ostensibly attended the conference only as speakers, they also played a key role in planning and conducting the conference and worked closely with NTO, the sponsor, even though NTO's chairwoman was involved in "irregularities" in managing a HUD housing project just a year earlier.
As if mixing politics with parties and passing it off as a way to help low-income tenants were not enough, three of the four HUD officials actually billed the agency for meals that had been provided to them in the trip package paid for by taxpayers.
This flagrant misuse of public trust is an example of government waste at its worst. Federal money was obviously misspent, taken from programs meant to help the disadvantaged. It's no wonder Americans have lost confidence in their government.
The agency should take action against those who organized the trip and should immediately sever all ties with the private group that sponsored it. The public deserves accountability from those who are being paid to oversee how tax money is spent.