D.A. Examining Struiksma’s Bills : Expenses for 1984 East Coast Trip Questioned; Investigation Possible

The District Attorney’s office is reviewing whether San Diego City Councilman Ed Struiksma properly billed the city for a trip to Boston and New York City in 1984, including dinner expenses for which he was reimbursed but which may have been paid for by someone else, city and county officials said Wednesday.

At the request of City Auditor Ed Ryan, the San Diego County District Attorney’s office has begun what spokeswoman Linda Miller termed “a preliminary review” of some of the bills incurred by Struiksma when the councilman made a side trip to New York City prior to attending an Urban Land Institute (ULI) meeting in Boston.

“There’s not an actual investigation going on,” Miller said. “After all the paper work is reviewed, we’ll make a determination . . . whether there will be an investigation.”

In a written statement issued late Wednesday night, Struiksma, a candidate for mayor, blamed the dispute over the bills on his loss of more than $600 in receipts during the October, 1984, trip.

“A situation in which I have acted in good faith has become quite complex,” Struiksma said in the five-page statement. “The welcome news is that this review will finally resolve what has to date been a very perplexing situation for all involved.”

Struiksma added in the statement that, acting on advice from the city auditor’s office, his staff “reconstructed” some of the trip’s expenses. However, Struiksma said that because he did not have the necessary receipts, in some cases his staff “simply filled in the blank with a number” that may bear little resemblance to reality.

City Atty. John Witt said that the district attorney was asked to review the matter “primarily because of the changed facts” concerning a meal in New York City for which Struiksma billed the city $65 but which a city redevelopment official claims he paid.

Jan Anton, a director of the Centre City Development Corp., was quoted in the San Diego Transcript as saying that he, his wife and a Great American First Savings Bank executive dined with Struiksma in New York City on Oct. 16, 1984. Anton also told the newspaper that he paid the $200-plus bill for the dinner, which he characterized as essentially a social meal at which some city business may have been discussed. Anton could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

However, in the expense account that he submitted to the city, Struiksma said that he paid for his own dinner.

“Basically, we’ve asked the district attorney to review the situation in light of these new facts that we learned about through the news media,” Witt said. “The question before the D.A. is whether or not this particular meal was falsely billed to the city when somebody else paid for it.”

“I’m not prejudging it, because there could be a lot of extenuating circumstances, like a mistake or mix-up of some kind,” Witt added. “But, under the circumstances, we felt that the district attorney should take a look at it.”

Steve Casey, the chief spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said Wednesday that while prosecutors have received “all of the paper work on all of the bills,” their review will focus on the disputed facts concerning the New York City dinner.

“That’s the only new thing in all of this,” Casey said. “We looked at this thing last year, and don’t want to waste our time going back over old ground.”

Miller, meanwhile, said that prosecutors’ preliminary review would last “at least a couple of days,” adding that she is uncertain when the decision on whether an official investigation is merited might be made.

The total public cost of Struiksma’s trip to Boston and New York City was $2,385.68. Of that amount, $554.58 consisted of lodging, meals, taxi fares and other bills incurred by Struiksma during the two days that he spent in New York City prior to the ULI conference in Boston, which he attended in an official city capacity.

In addition, because he flew from San Diego to New York but returned from Boston, Struiksma’s $841 air fare was about $200 higher than the price paid by other city officials who flew directly to the ULI conference.

Ryan first questioned Struiksma about the New York-related expenses last fall, asking the councilman for additional documentation to verify the bills and justify the city’s reimbursement of those expenses.

In a letter that he sent to Ryan last October, Struiksma explained that he decided to visit New York City because, as the chairman of the council’s Transportation and Land Use Committee, he felt that “it would be of benefit to me to have the perspective of having viewed the most urbanized area of our country.”

During his trip to New York City, Struiksma added, he visited City Hall, Central Park, the World Trade Center, the Trump Tower and redevelopment areas that “I felt would aid in my decision-making here in San Diego.”

In Wednesday night’s statement, Struiksma said that he could not document some of his expenses for the New York-Boston trip because of his loss of more than $600 in receipts during the trip. However, on the advice of the city auditor’s office, Struiksma added, his staffers “reconstructed” those trip expenses to the best of their ability. Ryan did not return The Times’ telephone call.

While the overall $600 figure included in that “reconstruction” approximated the total amount that he spent on miscellaneous expenses that he paid for with a cash advance from the city, Struiksma conceded in the statement that individual bills listed on his expense report--including the bill for the Oct. 16 dinner in dispute--may be, and probably are, inaccurate because he has no record of them.

“There was no attempt to make any of those numbers correlate with any actual amount spent because, after 30 days, (when he prepared his expense reports) I found it difficult to recall probably what amounted to 40 or 50 different expenditures for meals, cabs and other items,” Struiksma said.

Noting that his expense account lists $23.64 for dinner on Oct. 19, Struiksma added, “In reality, I have no idea whether I spent nothing, $10 or $50 that evening. We simply filled in the blank with a number.”

Struiksma added that he offered to reimburse the city for the $600 in question last fall, but said that Ryan told him “that was unnecessary.”