IRS official apologizes for lavish conference

WASHINGTON — An Internal Revenue Service official whose division staged a lavish $4.1 million training conference and who starred as Mr. Spock in a “Star Trek” parody shown at the 2010 California gathering conceded to Congress on Thursday that taxpayer dollars were wasted in the episode.

“We’re now in a very different environment” with new IRS spending curbs, Faris Fink, who was a top deputy in the agency’s small business division at the time, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Fink, who now heads that 24,000-employee division, said he believes many of the expenditures “should have been more closely scrutinized or not incurred at all and were not the best use of taxpayer dollars.”

The mea culpa by Fink was echoed by new acting IRS chief Danny Werfel as the embattled agency struggled to contain public and congressional ire over its targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status and its spending of $49 million on 225 employee conferences over the past three years.

Werfel called the 2010 gathering in Anaheim, Calif., “an unfortunate vestige from a prior era” and said IRS spending on travel and training has fallen 80 percent since then.

“Our work in this area is one part of a much larger effort to chart a path forward in the IRS. This is obviously a very challenging time for the agency,” Werfel said.

Werfel, who testified after Fink had left the committee room, became acting commissioner last month after President Barack Obama forced Steven Miller out of the job.

Werfel appeared a day after putting two IRS officials on administrative leave for accepting free food at a party in a private suite at the Anaheim conference.