May 31, 2012 — Nearly a month after the event, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration continues to maintain an information blackout regarding the purpose and cost of a three-night conference in Philadelphia for its legal corps of 135 lawyers and support staff.
The conference began April 30 and ended May 3 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Philadelphia, where none of the agency's legal team practices. NOAA has only weather offices in Philadelphia, two hours by car north of Silver Spring, Md., and Washington, D.C., where NOAA maintains its main offices.
The existence of the conference was first reported by the Florida Keys Keynoter in Marathon, Fla. On May 9, NOAA confirmed to the Times that the Office of General Counsel Lois Schiffer held the four-day conference in Philadelphia, but declined to release a copy of the agenda or a budget for the conference.
"NOAA's Office of General Counsel holds training sessions approximately every two years to provide essential, substantive and skills-based training to staff to increase understanding of substantive law and improve their work together in support of NOAA operations," said NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen. "All training sessions are planned with cost-effectiveness in mind, and NOAA strives to realize savings in overall travel and accommodation costs."
Since that single communique, however, NOAA has not responded to queries by the Times.
In the meantime, NOAA was distracted by a crisis of an incomparably larger scale, which broke public last Friday, involving a budgetary slight of hand at NOAA's National Weather Service serious enough to force the resignation of director Jack Hayes.