Dallas / Fort Worth Local News

DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ― The Cowboys Golf Course in Grapevine is an exceptional place to play. Hitting driver there is a dream for many local golfers.

The plush rolling fairways and smooth greens can command one of the highest fees for a public course in all of North Texas. But it seems cost was no barrier for some high ranking executives from the Fannie Mae office in Dallas, which is located just off the North Dallas Tollway.

Documents obtained by CBS 11 show at least 14 people in a recent Fannie Mae outing teed off at Cowboys at 1:30 p.m. on September 29 -- 22 days after the federal government took over Fannie to save the massive mortgage company from failure. The taxpayers tab for the golf outing was $6,279.26.

According to this receipt, Fannie paid for 20 golfers. The 14 listed on the tee sheet included three Fannie executives from Dallas, two Fannie execs from Chicago and one from Washington, DC. The cost for golf alone was $3,316.
 
According to the contract, golfing included a mango towel service. The contract also shows additional guests joined the golfers for dinner where they dined on over $1,700 worth of buffet food.

Then came the bar tab. According to this receipt, they drank 49 bottles or cans of domestic beer, five Grey Goose vodkas, six Absolute vodkas, some Tanqueray, and 31 glasses of the house red wine. The total bar tab was $555.

"I am outraged by this," said North Texas Congressional Representative Jeb Hensarling. He sits on the committee that oversees Fannie Mae and said there's good reason you should be outraged too.

"They have 200 billion dollars of taxpayer money from the school teacher in Mesquite, the factory worker in Garland, the policeman in Dallas, and they're running around golfing, getting mango towel service," said Hensarling. "I'm not even sure what mango towel service is, but I know the taxpayers of Dallas County and America shouldn't have to be paying for it."

Leslie Paige with the non-partisan watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste said Fannie Mae is at the center of the mortgage meltdown and needs to change its internal culture to be more respectful of taxpayers.

"Do they have any idea how bad this looks? They can take care of client relations with teleconferencing. They don't need to go around having very extravagant golf outings and that may be only one. We don't know, but I guarantee you if there's one, there's probably more," she said.

That's one of many questions we couldn't get answered by Fannie executives. Were there other events? Did Fannie buy plane tickets for the out of town guests? Did they put any guests up at hotels? Pay for meals? And why didn't they just cancel the event?

CBS 11's Doug Dunbar went to Fannie's Dallas office to try and find out, but no one would speak with him. Instead, Amy Bonitatibus, a Fannie Mae spokeswoman, sent us this statement:

"Fannie Mae holds customer advisory board meetings twice a year to bring together our customers to talk about issues in the housing market and ways to address them. These meetings are critical to our business as they allow our customers to provide us feedback on how we can better meet their needs and keep us informed of the challenges they face. While this event was planned since January, obviously circumstances with our company and the market overall have changed significantly since then. We have ceased all similar activities as those associated with this event, and we regret having not done so in this case."

For more on Fannie Mae's code of conduct, click here (.pdf file).

Click here (.pdf file) to read President and CEO Herbert Allison's recent speech before the House Committee on Financial Services.

Brian Faith, the Managing Director of Communications, also sent a statement on November 3, 2008. In the statement, he includes an excerpt from an email sent from Chuck Greener to management at Fannie Mae. Greener is Chief of Staff for Fannie Mae CEO Herb Allison. The email from Greener was sent to management on Wednesday, October 29, 2008, after CBS 11 began inquiring about the event at the Cowboys Club.

The statement, including the partial email, is below:

"Doug -

It was good speaking with you Friday evening. I'd like to again emphasize that, since being placed in conservatorship, the company under the direction of our new CEO, Herb Allison, has acted proactively to discontinue a variety of activities at the company and is reevaluating the company's participation and investment in all events and event-related activities.

While Fannie Mae is an ongoing enterprise that needs to meet and work with our lender partners on an ongoing basis, the company has either withdrawn or scaled back numerous customer-related and other gatherings in recent weeks. And, more broadly, the company has undertaken a comprehensive review of all philanthropic investments, entertainment expenditures, sponsorships, etc. with the objective to be as prudent and austere as possible given the circumstances the company and the market are facing.

As I mentioned, please keep in mind that the customer advisory council meeting in Dallas was planned at the beginning of the year and occurred as we were in the first few weeks of our management transition into conservatorship. Simply put, this is one event that slipped through the cracks and, as we noted in the statement we sent you last week, we regret it. We have been and are continuing to emphasize with all managers at the company the need to be very careful with regard to any external meetings, events and related activities. In fact, Herb Allison's Chief of Staff, Chuck Greener, sent a message to the management team at Fannie Mae last week reminding them that:

Given the company's current circumstances, it is critically important right now to re-examine each and every external event we sponsor with customers, partners and others prior to those events going forward -- even if the commitment to the event was made some time ago. Consequently, we need to know about and review any external events that you have coming up over the next six months. We want to work with you to ensure these events reflect the company's best judgment in this extraordinary environment. I appreciate everyone's help with this, and promise that we will do everything possible to work with you to support your business needs in this process.

I hope that provides some helpful context and, again, thanks for the opportunity to respond.

Sincerely,

Brian Faith
Managing Director, Communications
Fannie Mae"

If you would like to let your U.S. Representative know how you feel about this story, find out who they are and how to contact them by clicking here.

You can also contact Fannie Mae directly and ask for CEO Herbert Allison:
Corporate Headquarters
3900 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20016-2892
(202) 752-7000
headquarters@fanniemae.com

Click here for a list of their board of directors.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Unedited CBS 11 News Political Videos

• Entire Second Presidential Debate
• Katie Couric Sits Down With John McCain
• Web Extra: Full VP Debate
• Katie Coutic Sits Down With Barack Obama
• Biden Sits Down With Katie Couric
• Katie Couric Interviews Sarah Palin