City Hall staff spent $224,000 on travel over the past year
(Editor’s note: This is the second installment in a two-part series on City Hall’s travel expenses. An article in Tuesday’s paper focused on City Council spending.) CITY HALL — Department bosses here spent nearly $20,000 over the last year on airfare, rental cars, meals and other expenses to attend professional conferences throughout the United States, a recent report shows.
All but two of City Hall’s 14 department heads took at least one trip, with several taking three or more. Most of the conferences pulled the managers away from their desks during the work week, but allowed them to learn new skills, network, and air Santa Monica’s needs and concerns to a national audience, officials said.
Travel bills for department heads ranged from zero to nearly $5,000.
Police Chief James T. Butts spent $4,869, more than any other department head, according to the report. Butts attended a leadership symposium in San Francisco and conferences in San Diego, Santa Barbara and San Antonio, Texas. In addition to airfare and hotel, Butts was reimbursed for taxi rides and meals, including a $90 room service tab from The Westin Hotel in San Antonio.
Butts said attending conferences is important because the “cross pollination of ideas prevents jurisdictions from continuing to reinvent the wheel separately.” As to the room service bill, Butts said the $90 was amassed over the course of the April 21-23 conference, adding he usually eats dinner in his hotel room.
Second on the list was Stephanie Negriff, head of the Big Blue Bus, who spent $3,649 to attend four transportation-themed conferences in California and one in Salt Lake City. Negriff said her participation in the conferences has helped bring in more than $1 million in federal discretionary funds for transit and kept Santa Monica at the forefront of a push for stronger legislation to protect bus drivers and passengers.
“I don’t attend a lot of the individual meetings, so it’s important for me to make the annual meeting (of the American Public Transportation Association) when I can,” said Negriff, who also attended a retreat at the Sheraton in San Diego as a new member of the executive committee of the California Transit Association.
Jeff Mathieu, director of City Hall’s resource management, went to three conferences in the past 12 months, spending a total of $2,905, the third-highest amount by any department head. Mathieu went to housing and redevelopment conferences in Tampa and Dallas, and attended a seminar for airport executives in San Francisco. Mathieu rented a car for each of the conferences, for a total bill of $500.
After Mathieu, expenses dropped to $1,816 for Gordon Anderson, assistant to the city attorney, who attended two conferences, and $1,324 for City Clerk Maria Stewart, who went to an annual clerk’s conference in Monterey.
Steve Stark, the city’s finance director, spent $1,193 to attend a League of California Cities conference in Sacramento. Stark said there’s a balance to be found between attending too many conferences and attending too few. Saving City Hall money is important, but so is staying sharp professionally, he added.
“I believe attending professional trainings and conferences keeps a department head current with the latest trends and technologies — the skills required to best perform their duties and to interact with other professionals,” Stark said. “You pick up new and creative ideas that may apply to your city.”
Below Stark was Suzanne Frick, who directs the planning department. Frick spent $1,057 to attend an urban land-use conference in San Francisco.
The seven other department heads spent less than $1,000 on travel over the past 12 months, according to the report, with City Attorney Marsha Moutrie and City Librarian Wini Allard not seeking any reimbursement at all. Moutrie, who attends three or more conferences each year, said for the 10 years she has been the city’s top prosecutor she has avoided charging City Hall for travel, in part because she has a high-profile position and wants to avoid appearing partisan or influenced in any way.
“Usually I pay for things myself,” said Moutrie, who also voluntarily gave up two week’s salary to help the city through struggling economic times. “We’re obligated (as attorneys) to keep training, and I do — I just pay for it myself.”
Officials prepared the report on travel costs at the request of the Daily Press. Also requested last month was a detailed breakdown of overtime pay at City Hall, and Moutrie said Tuesday her department was processing that request.
The money spent by department heads is just a fraction of the $224,000 City Hall has paid to reimburse staffers for travel over the past year. More than $318,000 was set aside this year and $296,000 for next year, Stark said.
“Remember, that’s $296,000 on a $391 million budget — so that’s a very small percentage going to travel and training,” he added. “It’s a small number from a budget perspective.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 23, 2004. Read the original PDF.