Trustees Cut Expenses 92% in Wake of Ely Charges : Education: Travel and entertainment claims by college district board members drop to $1,909 from $23,855 a year ago.

In the wake of embezzlement charges against one of their members, Ventura County Community College District trustees slashed their travel and entertainment spending by 92% this school year.

Reforms enacted by the board following James T. (Tom) Ely’s arrest last August for alleged padding of expenses resulted in the board’s expense claims dropping to $1,909 from $23,855 a year ago.

“Tom Ely’s predicament put a big spotlight on trustee travel and forced us to rethink the need to routinely attend conferences and dinners,” board President Tim Hirschberg said Wednesday. “We’re in a tight budget situation now, and money should be spent in the classroom and not on a fancy hotel room 3,000 miles away.”

Ely, whose criminal trial is nearing a close, was by far the biggest spender on the board before his arrest, racking up nearly $11,000 in expenses in the 1989-90 school year, including $3,656 for a three-day convention in Vancouver, Canada. He remains a member of the board even though he has attended no meetings in the last 10 months, citing a disabling back injury.

The board instituted reforms last year to limit expense-account spending, including voiding trustee American Express cards and requiring that all trustee trips be approved by the board in advance.

The trustees were so restrictive in authorizing travel for themselves over the last 12 months that the board’s non-voting student trustee outspent the entire board by nearly 50%.

Student Trustee Jon Runyan ran up $2,953 in expenses, mostly for student conferences in Northern California. The board questioned Runyan’s travel requests but approved them.

Trustee Peter Tafoya accounted for 86% of the board’s travel expenses in the present year, which ends June 30. Tafoya’s expenses totaled $1,644, half of which went toward a weekend trip to a Monterey conference in late May.

Tafoya, who spent $2,421 last school year, defended the three trips he took within the last 12 months. He said he went to Sacramento in October as chairman of the board’s facilities planning committee to secure state funds for a performing arts center, gymnasium and two day-care centers being built on the district’s three campuses.

Tafoya drove to Monterey last month in a car rented by the district for a meeting of the California Community College Trustees Assn. Tafoya said he went so that he could run for election to the association’s board of directors.

“My reason for running was that this district has not been represented for some time on that board,” said Tafoya, who failed in that election bid. “It’s critical in financially lean times to have as much influence with the Legislature as possible.”

Trustee Greg Cole’s expenses totaled $193 in the last 12 months, compared with $2,784 in the 1989-90 school year. Cole’s largest expense was a $65 ticket to a Ventura County NAACP awards banquet on May 10.

Hirschberg spent $72 for a one-day conference in Santa Barbara and two Ventura County School Boards Assn. programs. He spent $1,400 a year earlier, including $1,234 for a trip the board took to Washington, D.C.

Trustee Gregory Kampf reported no expenses for the year. The year before, Kampf spent $1,611, most of it for the Washington trip.

The travel cutbacks extended into Chancellor Barbara Derryberry’s office, which spent $986 for travel and related expenses over the past year, compared with $5,767 the year before and $9,700 two years ago. Those figures do not include the chancellor’s $5,400 annual car allowance.

“Travel spending had gotten out of hand, and it climaxed last year in a kind of orgy of conference attendance,” Hirschberg said. “We have not turned down a trustee request for travel this year. We have just not been flooded with requests.”