Mayor of Inglewood Defends Travel Expenses

Inglewood Mayor Edward Vincent has spent considerably more on travel in recent years than his City Council colleagues or the mayors of comparably sized cities, records show, and some of the expenses have no apparent connection to city business.

Vincent defends his travel as beneficial to the city, and administrators say the city’s travel policy allows elected officials to determine if a trip is appropriate.

Vincent’s city-paid trips include:

A 1987 Thanksgiving holiday weekend trip to New Orleans for a discussion with that city’s mayor--a meeting that Vincent says did not take place.

A 4-day trip to New Orleans in 1984. The purpose, according to reimbursement forms filed by the mayor, was to discuss parade planning with officials there. Inglewood has not sponsored a parade during Vincent’s 5-year tenure.

Numerous trips to Philadelphia for which the mayor was reimbursed by the city even though he provided little or no explanation or documentation showing how the expenses related to city business. Vincent has relatives in Philadelphia, but he said the trips were not personal in nature.

A 3-day tour of farmers markets in the Morro Bay and San Francisco areas last year. Records filed by the mayor indicate that he billed the trip to both the city and his campaign fund. Vincent has declined to explain the apparent double billing since it was reported by The Times in September. The attorney general’s office is conducting an inquiry.

Records show that Vincent has spent about $39,000 on trips since taking office in mid-1983, far more than other Inglewood elected officials or the mayors of other cities of comparable size.

“I don’t think that’s an exorbitant amount of money,” Vincent said in an interview, asserting that some of his travels have brought benefits to the city. He cited his attendance at meetings of the National Organization to Insure a Sound-Controlled Environment, a group that fights aircraft noise, and noted that the city has received more than $14 million in grants to recycle land affected by noise at nearby Los Angeles International Airport.

“I don’t get a big kick out of traveling,” Vincent said. “I travel strictly to bring in the bucks.”

As for trips that appear to lack a governmental purpose, Vincent said: “Whatever I do, it’s city business. It’s for the benefit of the city.”

Vincent’s destinations also have included Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. His travel spending tops that of the mayors, and in some cases the entire city councils, of several comparably sized cities. Like Vincent, most of those officials are part-time public servants, although Vincent, who earns $10,800 a year, has long complained that he works full time in the mayor’s job.

In 1987, he tried unsuccessfully to win passage of a City Charter amendment that would have made his job a full-time position paying about $50,000. Vincent had been on unpaid leave from his county Probation Department job for four years, but recently returned to work.

Vincent spent about $9,000 on travel in the 1987-88 fiscal year, $6,900 the previous year and $7,100 in 1985-86, records show. By comparison, Long Beach Mayor Ernie Kell spent about $2,100, $4,400 and $4,700, respectively, in the same periods, according to records.

Long Beach has about 500,000 residents, nearly five times Inglewood’s 104,000.

Torrance Mayor Katy Geissert, whose city also is larger than Inglewood, with nearly 140,000 residents, spent $1,047 in the 1987-88 fiscal year, less than 12% of the amount Vincent spent.

In Santa Monica, a city of about 95,000, the mayor spent about $2,600 on travel in the last fiscal year and six council members averaged about $1,600 each, a spokesman said.

In Glendale, a city of 160,000, the entire five-member City Council spent less than $5,000 on travel last year, officials said.

In Pasadena, a city of about 130,000, with a mayor elected yearly from within a 7-member city board, Mayor John Crowley was considered an “extremely active” mayor and spent $7,000 on travel last year, a spokesman said.

Vincent said cities are not comparable, giving as an example Inglewood’s problems with airport noise, gangs and drugs.

“You have a lot of different things happening in Inglewood,” he said. “You have a different ethnic base. You don’t have the same problems in other cities.”

A former Inglewood official, who asked not to be named, said the city should give more scrutiny to elected officials’ travel expenses.

“All you have to do is say, ‘I wanna,’ ” the ex-official said.

City Manager Paul Eckles said there have been instances in which the city rejected travel reimbursement claims that were clearly inappropriate, but he acknowledged that city travel policy lets elected officials decide what trips constitute city business.

Under that policy, the city paid almost $2,000 last year for lodging, air fare and expenses for Vincent to visit New Orleans and Philadelphia over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, from Friday, Nov. 27 to Wednesday, Dec. 2. On reimbursement forms, Vincent stated that the purpose of the trip was to meet with the mayors of New Orleans and Philadelphia.

But, in an interview, Vincent said he did not actually meet with either mayor. In New Orleans, he said, he met with staff members of Mayor Sidney Barthelemy. He said he did not remember the exact topic, but said he believed the discussions concerned future meeting sites of the National Conference of Black Mayors and the World Conference of Mayors, groups in which he is involved.

However, Barthelemy spokeswoman Janks Broussard said the mayor’s chief aides--including the aide who handles matters concerning the National Conference of Black Mayors--have no record of meeting with Vincent during that period. City Hall was closed for the Thanksgiving holiday during the time of Vincent’s stay, she said.

Asked about Broussard’s comments, Vincent said he did not remember the names of everyone he met with during the trip, but said he did remember meeting with Edward Flint, who he described as a well-known New Orleans school teacher and athletic coach.

During that trip, taxpayers picked up the $212 tab for Vincent to be host at a Saturday dinner for Flint and a couple identified as Mr. and Mrs. Leon King, records show. Also attending was Frank Gilliam, who Vincent described as an employee of the Minnesota Vikings professional football team.

Vincent said the dinner was a legitimate Inglewood business expense because the group discussed employment, city and school district affairs and other issues pertinent to Inglewood and New Orleans.

Inglewood taxpayers paid $303 for the mayor to stay at the New Orleans Marriott from Friday through Sunday that weekend, records show. The mayor did not submit a hotel bill from Philadelphia, but he was reimbursed for five days of expenses at $60 a day.

Records show that the city bought Vincent’s $1,086 airline package before he asked either New Orleans’ or Philadelphia’s mayor for a meeting. The same day the tickets were purchased--Nov. 13--Vincent wrote a letter to Mayor Barthelemy asking for a meeting on “matters of mutual interest concerning the National Conference of Black Mayors.”

Wrote to Goode

Also that day, Vincent wrote to Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode requesting a meeting to discuss new methods of garbage disposal. Vincent said in an interview that he did not meet with Goode but did discuss refuse disposal with several officials, which Philadelphia officials confirmed.

When asked why the New Orleans dinner and other expenses over the holiday weekend should be paid by taxpayers, Vincent said Inglewood officials would not have reimbursed him for the receipts he submitted if they had not been related to city business.

“Paul Eckles and (Finance Director) Nick Rives are pretty conservative guys,” Vincent said. “You have to give them receipts so it’s legitimate. There’s a lot of reimbursement I don’t even try to get.”

However, both Eckles and Rives, whose department handles travel reimbursements, said they rarely question the appropriateness of trips or expenses.

“We’ve given city officials pretty wide discretion to determine what’s city travel,” Eckles said. “The public can pass judgment one way or another. It’s not appropriate for me to be second-guessing. I’m satisfied the mayor did indeed do the things he said. I don’t think the system should be designed to have some clerk second-guessing the mayor on whether a trip was city business.”

In the same five-year period in which Vincent spent more than $39,000 in city funds on travel, Councilman Daniel Tabor spent about $23,000 and Councilman Anthony Scardenzan has spent about $10,500. The other two council members, Ervin (Tony) Thomas and Ann Wilk, have spent a collective total of about $3,000 since being elected in June, 1987.

Expenses Vary

Inglewood City Clerk Hermanita Harris has spent about $4,000 since taking office in 1986, while City Treasurer Wanda Brown, elected in June, 1987, has spent more than $10,000.

Although their travel expenses vary greatly, the council members said trips at public expense are justified if they benefit the city. They said officials should make an effort to separate public expenses from personal expenses.

Councilman Tabor, who described the purpose of his travels as increasing affirmative action opportunities and economic development in the city, said: “We should be traveling on business as it relates to our function as city officials. It should not be frivolous. There should be some direct impact from our travel on the city. I don’t think the privilege has been abused by the majority of people who have access to it. If there are examples of abuse, we need to look at the travel policy.”

Councilwoman Wilk said: “If the expenses are justified, fine. If they’re not justified, that makes me very upset.”

Wilk said she has seen little need to travel except to meetings of the anti-noise group and the National League of Cities. Similarly, Scardenzan said he feels that officials should be frugal about travel, but, like Vincent, he questioned the validity of comparing the mayor’s travel to that of officials in other cities.

“Spending has to be done according to the needs of the city,” Scardenzan said. “We probably need more help on some problems, so we may need more travel.”

On the other hand, Scardenzan said, he does not feel the city should pay for travel that has political purposes, and he said that events such as the black mayors’ meetings fit that category.

“It should not be an expense charged to the taxpayer,” Scardenzan said.

Councilman Thomas could not be reached for comment.

State Investigation

Travel spending in Inglewood has been an issue since The Times disclosed in an article Sept. 15 that Vincent apparently had charged both the city and his campaign fund for the 1987 trip to the Morro Bay and San Francisco farmers markets. The attorney general’s office is investigating whether campaign funds were misused. Vincent has declined to explain the apparent double billing but has denied any wrongdoing.

Vincent, an astute political fund-raiser, has also traveled widely at his campaign fund’s expense. The state Fair Political Practices Commission is reviewing a complaint regarding Vincent’s failure to explain $50,000 in travel spending by his campaign fund since 1983. Vincent said he has hired an accountant to correct errors on his campaign statements.

The mayor’s city-paid travel has included at least one visit to Philadelphia every year since 1984.

Records show the city paid for Vincent to meet with the Philadelphia Housing Authority Police on two occasions. Inglewood does not have a housing authority police or public housing projects of the type found in eastern cities, but Vincent said there was still a parallel to high-crime, low-income areas in Inglewood.

“We don’t call them housing projects,” he said. “But it’s the same anywhere you have a large number of people concentrated in one area. I don’t care if it’s Philadelphia, New York or Chicago.”

Lack of Details

The first meeting with the Philadelphia Housing Authority Police was in 1986, according to a handwritten notation on the mayor’s reimbursement request, which gives no purpose or topic for the meeting.

Vincent stopped in Philadelphia after attending a mayors’ conference in Washington, with Inglewood paying his Washington-Philadelphia train fare and return air fare from Philadelphia to Inglewood, records show. The trip cost $1,758.

This year, the city paid $656 in lodging and expenses for Vincent to attend meetings on gang and drug activity in Philadelphia with the housing authority police for two days in April, records show. Vincent then attended a 2-day mayors’ conference in Washington. The entire trip to Philadelphia and Washington cost about $2,172.

“Lessons I learned in Philadelphia have been helpful in Inglewood,” Vincent said. “The gang thing came to a forefront in Philadelphia.”

He said various East Coast anti-crime strategies he learned on the trips, such as designating one-way streets and no-parking zones in trouble spots, have been helpful in Inglewood.

Inglewood taxpayers also paid for Vincent to take side trips to Philadelphia in 1984, 1985 and 1987 during midwinter meetings of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington. The reasons for those Philadelphia stops were not explained on city records.

“Let me say this as an umbrella answer,” Vincent said when asked about these and other unexplained travel. “If it’s there, it was on city business. Any travel I take relates to city business. If it’s not, I pay for it out of my campaign fund. That’s what the campaign money is for.”

According to a handwritten note on his reimbursement request for the 1987 trip, Vincent indicated that he met with Philadelphia Mayor Goode before flying back to Los Angeles. But records do not explain the purpose of the meeting or its connection to Inglewood city business. The entire 1987 trip to Washington and Philadelphia cost $1,670 for five days.

A spokeswoman for Goode said the Philadelphia mayor recalled meeting with Vincent last year.

The 1985 Philadelphia trip took place in January after Vincent attended the 2-day mayors’ conference in Washington and stayed another two days at city expense to attend President Reagan’s second inauguration, records show. He then went to Philadelphia, with taxpayers footing his $28 train fare and $132 for a rental car in Philadelphia. The trip, including seven days of expenses, cost $2,390.

Difficulty Remembering

Vincent said he did not actually attend the inaugural because outdoor ceremonies were canceled because of cold weather. But he said he took care of city business throughout the trip, adding that it was hard to remember specific activities that occurred several years ago.

Records for 1984 show that after the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting from Jan. 25 to Jan. 27, the city paid for Vincent to rent a car in Washington. He returned the car in Philadelphia two days later at a cost of $171.24, for which he was reimbursed by the city, according to records. There is no mention in records of any Inglewood business being conducted in Philadelphia during that period, but the city paid for Vincent’s Jan. 30 return flight from that city.

Later in 1984, taxpayers paid about $770 for air fare and four days of lodging and expenses in New Orleans so Vincent could discuss what reimbursement forms described as “parade planning” with officials there. Inglewood also paid for former Assistant City Manager Joseph Rouzan--now a school board member--to accompany the mayor, records show.

There have been no parades held in Inglewood during the mayor’s tenure, officials said. Eckles said the city was considering a parade at the time of Vincent’s trip.

Vincent said he went to New Orleans “at the insistence” of Inglewood administrators because New Orleans has “a parade every week.” After his trip, he said, it was decided that Inglewood would not have a parade because it would be too costly.

In the 1982 mayoral campaign, Vincent--then a councilman--criticized his opponent, Mayor Lee Weinstein, for what Vincent characterized as excessive travel spending. Vincent campaign literature said Weinstein, who served as mayor from 1979 to 1983, failed to show “economy in office” because he spent $25,000 on travel.

Defending his own $39,000 in travel spending since 1983, Vincent said: “The mayor before me didn’t bring anything back to the city. That’s the difference.”

Liberal Policy

Although Inglewood has a liberal travel policy, Eckles said, there are some guidelines. The city does not pay for first-class air fare and only pays the one-bed rate for hotel rooms unless a conference provides special lower rates.

Nonetheless, the city paid $406 for a first-class, round-trip flight to Sacramento for Treasurer Brown to attend a 1-day legislative update on local government finance May 12. The ticket was purchased on April 22, three weeks before the event. Coach tickets can be purchased for $286 a week in advance, according to airlines surveyed.

Eckles said the treasurer was subsequently informed about the city policy and has not flown first-class since.

In an interview, Brown said she took the first-class flight because of “seating problems.” She said Eckles approved the flight beforehand, while Eckles said he had no such recollection.

Brown’s travel to conventions and conferences since taking office in June, 1987, has cost about $10,100, according to records, almost double her predecessor’s average annual spending during recent years. Brown has attended conferences in cities including New York, Baltimore, Seattle, San Francisco and Austin, Tex., as well as various meetings in Sacramento.

Brown argued that as a newly elected treasurer, she needed to attend numerous conferences to “gain a good foothold on the position.” Her $10,460 travel budget for the last fiscal year was set by her predecessor, but Brown said she could have spent more than that by using other treasurer department funds. And she said that she has reduced her travel budget to $6,000 for the current fiscal year.

Brown’s single most expensive trip was to a 2-day New York conference titled “Women and the Corporation” in May, at an expense to taxpayers of $1,556. She also spent $1,324 to attend a 3-day April seminar in Baltimore titled “Managing for Results in a Restricted Fiscal Environment.”