ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 28, 1996 TAG: 9611290102
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C9 EDITION: HOLIDAY
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
INSPECTOR GENERAL says officers have been getting preferential treatment.
A huge Navy PX in Virginia has given inappropriate preferential treatment to senior officers and their spouses over several years, the Navy's inspector general says in a report.
It said officers often received savings of up to 25 percent beyond the normal PX discounts at the Norfolk store, The Washington Post reports in Wednesday's editions.
Exchange employees also did carpentry work for officers at discount prices and sometimes traveled around the state looking for out-of-stock items requested by admirals, the report found.
PXs are retail stores run by the military where discounted prices are available to both enlisted personnel and officers. The Navy's report denounced preferential arrangements as violating store policies that require equal treatment of all and scolded the officers involved for exercising poor judgment.
The report included the name of only one of the offenders - Rear Adm. John T. Kavanaugh, former head of the Navy Exchange Service Command, which sets policy for the Navy's 1,500 retail stores.
Lt. Cmdr. Steve Lowry, a spokesman for the Virginia Beach-based command, referred questions to the Navy Office of Information in Washington. A telephone message seeking comment was left Wednesday.
The names of about two dozen other Navy and Marine officers, most of them admirals, who received favored treatment were deleted from copies of the report prepared for public release, the newspaper said.
The Navy said in September that some senior officers had been admonished for their involvement and had reimbursed the Navy for the value of the discounts and special services received, which service spokesmen said totaled less than $10,000.
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