PHA Workers Return Luxury Gym Bags

Most PHA workers who received $1,000 gym bags from former director Carl Greene have returned the controversial items.

The Philadelphia Daily News says 13 of the 15 Tumi bags were returned on Thursday , while two employees will pay a discounted price to keep the swank leather bags.

Interim head Michael P. Kelly told 15 employees to return the $$1,000 gym bags given them by Carl Greene. Greene got the bags at a 20 percent discount.

Only two employees kept their bags and paid the PHA a discounted price.

"The public was rightly outraged by the recent disclosure that PHA managers were given Tumi carry-on duffel bags costing $796 a piece at the PHA annual strategic planning conference in September 2009," Kelly said this week. "Please understand that I am not criticizing you for accepting this item, but I do want to make a statement that the gift was not an appropriate expenditure of PHA funds."

Kelly said he will attempt to return the bags to Nordstrom and put any money back into the PHA's general fund.