“Costs for lodging and air travel to attend the conference are comparative to those found at mainland venues.”

The quote is the Ninth Circuit's response to a letter the court received from Senators Charles Grassley and Jeff Sessions inquiring why the Ninth Circuit was hosting its annual judicial conference at a resort on Maui instead of, say, a hotel in Billings, Montana.  The Senators' letter notes that the cost of accommodations on Maui will exceed $700,000 assuming that the conference has as many attendees as the court's 2010 conference.  This matters because the travel and accommodations costs for the judges in the Ninth circuit are paid by the government (which gets its money from taxes).

I guess simply answering that Maui is nicer than Billings would have been undiplomatic.