A year before the controversial General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas that cost taxpayers more than $800,000, Roll Call reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urged the White House and federal agencies to again allow conferences in Vegas. 

Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, argued at the time that it wasn’t fair for the feds to ban cities like Las Vegas and Reno from government travel. Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson reportedly defended Reid’s stance when asked about it on Monday. 

“It has nothing to do with where they had the conference — you could have had that conference anywhere and wasted taxpayer money,” Roll Call quoted Jentleson as having said. “It had to do with the lack of judgment of the people who planned it.