GSA has canceled 35 conferences, including all of those in its four western regions, in the wake of its “over the top” Las Vegas event.

GSA’s Region 9, which hosted the 2010 Las Vegas conference for the Public Buildings Service at a cost of $822,000, has canceled several contractor events. Two of the agency’s Opening Doors conferences, set for Honolulu in June and Las Vegas in September, have been taken off the schedule.

Also scratched was this month’s GreenUp 2012 conference in Vegas, a showcase for eco-friendly products and services. A video from the Western Regions Conference showed GSA employees mocking President Obama’s Go Green campaign as “a press event.”

The agency’s biggest annual event, the Training Conference and Expo, is still scheduled for May 15-17 in San Antonio.

In addition to the cancellations, Acting GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini said he has blocked most employee travel and abolished “Hats Off,” a rewards program that doled out goodies such as cameras and iPods to Public Buildings Service employees in violation of regulations.

Congressional investigators are looking into conference spending by other federal agencies. The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, said he has sent letters to 23 agencies asking for information about their conference policies. “The committee intends on investigating the whole practice of conferences,” he said at a hearing on the GSA Western Regions Conference.

The April 16 hearing was the first of at least four congressional inquiries into the conference at the M Resort Spa Casino near Las Vegas. The Region 9 PBS commissioner, Jeffrey Neely, invoked his Fifth Amendment right to keep silent and declined to answer the committee’s questions.

The GSA inspector general reported that Neely had told his staff to make the conference “over the top.” Tangherlini said he has demanded that Neely and two other agency executives reimburse the government for the cost of private parties in their hotel suites.

Tangerhlini said Neely, three other regional PBS commissioners and six other career employees have been placed on leave.

Inspector General Brian Miller said he has referred his findings to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, “including bribes, including possible kickbacks.”

Miller testified that Neely orchestrated the lavish conference because “he could.” In the months before the conference, Neely was also serving as acting Region 9 administrator. “It looks like Mr. Neely was in charge of Mr. Neely,” District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said.

Miller said the autonomy of GSA’s regions also contributed to the problem. Tangherlini has brought regional budgets under headquarters control.

Martha Johnson, who resigned as GSA administrator on April 2, the day the IG report was released, testified that she learned of the preliminary findings ten months earlier. Johnson later approved a $9,000 bonus for Neely even though she knew the IG was focusing on his role in the conference. Several committee members expressed outrage, but she said, “I gave the $9,000 bonus based on performance,” not conduct.

Rep. Dan Burton, R-IN, questioned why Johnson did not remove Neely from his post as soon as she heard about the conference spending. “I just can’t understand why you left him there for the next eight or nine months,” he said.

“I did not want to move until I had a final, official, complete report,” Johnson said.

She said PBS Commissioner Robert Peck recommended the bonus for Neely. She fired Peck, along with her senior counselor, Stephen Leeds, before resigning herself.