EPA’s $1-Million Training Costs Questioned

The Environmental Protection Agency has spent more than $1 million since 1993 on training seminars at ritzy resorts or on subjects unrelated to the environment, such as defensive driving and speed reading, according to GOP congressional investigators.

Posh inns in West Virginia, a beach hotel in Puerto Rico and a mountain resort in Colorado were among venues chosen for classes and conferences, Republican investigators for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee reported.

Training sessions included:

* Four-day seminars on improving managers’ productivity, held at various resorts in West Virginia and Maryland. Cost: $20,000 per seminar.

* A $7,000, one-day session at a hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to train EPA lawyers on preparing for administrative hearings.

* A two-day auditors’ conference at a Breckenridge, Colo., lodge costing $4,400.

The committee said it identified $1.4 million in “questionable” EPA training expenses from 1993 through 1995. The agency was among the worst offenders in the committee’s investigation of inappropriate spending on federal employee training programs, said committee Chairman William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.).

“What is especially offensive about EPA’s action is that the Clinton administration has repeatedly requested increases in EPA’s budget while doing nothing to curb this wasteful spending,” Clinger charged.

All the training was for employees who earned more than $50,000 a year, a committee aide said. The EPA defended the seminars as training sessions necessary to boost performance, such as those any company or agency sponsors.

Some classes must be held outside EPA offices to accommodate large groups, spokesman David Cohen said, but the agency keeps costs down by choosing hotels near employees’ offices and paying less than commercial firms do for outside trainers.

“The EPA takes a very conservative tack when it comes to training,” Cohen said. “It doesn’t cost a lot to reserve a room or stay somewhere close by.”

The EPA spent $10.8 million on training for its 17,200 employees, about 1% of its overall budget. Private companies typically spend 3% to 5% of staff costs on training.

Some seminars had nothing to do with environmental issues. The agency’s office of solid waste and emergency response spent tens of thousands of dollars on Evelyn Wood speed-reading courses, business writing classes, driving courses and seminars on resolving conflicts among employees.

Cohen said some EPA employees must read through voluminous files. Improving their reading speed boosts productivity, he said.

The $20,000 seminars on productivity were to teach required management skills to staffers who were in line for promotion, Cohen said.

Run by an outside firm, the seminars imitate actual executive settings and have “specific logistical requirements,” an EPA training official said. The West Virginia resort was chosen because it’s close to Washington.

Seventeen employees attended each session, according to the committee’s information.

The meeting in Puerto Rico was to fulfill the EPA’s statutory obligation to train staff and local officials involved in pollution cases. Many staffers at the meeting were based in Puerto Rico, Cohen said.