Council Makes Travel a 1st-Class Experience : Torrance: Members have cut allowable annual expenses from $5,000 to $3,500 per person. They see the move as largely symbolic, and some defend their travel choices.

Timothy Mock didn’t skimp when he took a long-planned trip to Washington in March, days before he was to vacate his Torrance City Council seat.

Mock, who had recently lost a bid for reelection, stayed at the four-star Grand Hotel near Georgetown for $200 a night. His four-day excursion to the annual National League of Cities conference cost Torrance taxpayers nearly $2,000.

Nor did Councilman Bill Applegate brown-bag it when he spent three days in Washington for a league conference in 1991. He took a $275-a-night room at the Four Seasons Hotel--rated the 10th-best hotel in the world by a leading travel publication--billing the city $1,621 for the trip.

Council members representing Torrance at out-of-town conferences have stayed at many nice places over the years--Las Vegas, San Francisco and Yosemite National Park among them. But such city-paid travel has come under scrutiny of late as city leaders, facing intense budgetary pressures, search for ways to cut costs.

Evidence of this came last month, when the seven-member council voted to cut its annual travel budget from $5,000 to $3,500 per person. Portraying the move as a symbolic gesture, council members asserted that while it will not save much money, the reduction demonstrates their willingness to shoulder their share of austerity.

“I thought we should be sending a message that, ‘Hey, we realize that with tough economic times we will need to be cutting back,’ ” said Councilwoman Dee Hardison, who proposed the measure. “We as a council don’t have a lot of areas where we can cut, but travel was one area we could look at.”

Spending on council members’ travel amounted to $18,000 in the 1991-92 budget year and $23,000 in fiscal 1990-91, relatively small outlays in a city whose operating budget exceeds $100 million.

But a look at the council travel account nevertheless reveals case after case of free spending--and poor oversight.

Council members have often picked posh--and costly--accommodations, and vigorously defend their right to do so. Applegate, for instance, said he stayed at Washington’s Four Seasons last year for reasons of convenience and safety.

“That was the hotel that was available at the time,” he said. “There are certain cities where hotels are quite expensive. Washington is one of the most expensive cities anywhere. . . . Washington is not particularly a very safe town. If I feel comfortable, safe at a certain hotel, then that’s where I’m going to stay. (Safety) is everything.”

Applegate added, however, that while at this year’s League of Cities conference, he rented a room at Washington’s Park Hyatt for a discount rate of $114 a day. His bill for the trip was $880, less than half the amount that the city paid for Mock to attend the same conference, which was held at the Washington Hilton Hotel.

Mock’s charges for that March conference, his last trip as a councilman, have drawn heavy fire from Councilwoman Maureen O’Donnell. She says the former councilman should not have made the trip after losing his seat earlier that month.

Mock’s stay at the Grand Hotel cost taxpayers $1,043, according to city records. Mock also logged 156 miles on a rental car, billing the city for the $156 cost. Meals, taxi fare and parking accounted for the rest of his trip’s $1,944 price tag.

“I think that he should pay the money back,” said O’Donnell, a newcomer to the council who took office the day Mock returned from the conference. “He had nothing to profit by anything he learned at that convention. Anything he learned there could not be utilized in a subsequent term of office.”

Mock, however, said his conference registration and economy-class airline ticket, both booked long in advance, were non-refundable. “For one thing,” he said, “I didn’t think I would lose the election.”

He also defended his choice of lodgings. Said Mock: “If you’re going to Washington, you’re going to stay at nice places.”

Sometimes the city has overspent on travel because council members and city staffers have failed to closely track expenses.

Over the past three years, for instance, Councilman Mark Wirth and former members Mock and Dan Walker exceeded the $5,000 annual limit on travel costs at least once.

Wirth, Mock and Walker blame the city’s Finance Department, saying they were not provided with up-to-date expense totals that would have shown them they were nearing the limit. City Manager Jackson acknowledged that the city had no such “triggering mechanism.”

“We’re trying to set up a tighter system,” he said.

Poor bean-counting also resulted in the city paying twice for a round-trip airline ticket that Councilman George Nakano used to travel to Washington last November, records show.

Nakano made the trip to discuss Torrance’s annual Armed Forces Day Parade with Pentagon officials. He requested and received $1,148 from the city to cover the air fare, after the city had paid the same amount to the travel agency that issued the ticket.

The city Finance Department discovered the double payment in July, while gathering the travel figures requested for this story. Nakano returned the $1,148 to the city.

“It was a mistake,” he said.

Sometimes, council members are accompanied by their spouses on city-paid trips, but it is often impossible to tell from city expense reports how much of the additional cost is billed to the city.

In October, Wirth and his wife, Nancy, traveled to San Francisco for a League of California Cities conference at a cost to Torrance of $920. The city did not cover Nancy Wirth’s air fare, which was paid with funds from the councilman’s campaign account.

However, Torrance footed the bill for the couple’s three-night stay in a $170 double-occupancy room at San Francisco’s The Inn at Union Square. It cannot be determined whether the city also paid for any of Nancy Wirth’s meals, taxi fares or other incidentals because a detailed accounting for such items is not required of council members.

Wirth says that when his wife joins him on city trips, he bills the city only for his portion of the charges. “The city didn’t pay for any of her expenses,” he said.

Council members disagree on the value of out-of-town conferences.

Hardison, who has taken no trips at city expense in the past two years, says she has little need for such conferences.

“I won’t say there isn’t any value to be gotten from going to the conferences,” she said. “I have found, however, that you can be an effective council person by not going to them. . . . I personally don’t think that it has hurt me by not going to them.”

But Wirth says League of Cities conferences have made him a better council member.

“It’s an educational process,” he said. “I’m really active in transportation issues. So I will talk to legislators or people that are active in transportation. (Conference attendance) gives you an opportunity to directly lobby people on issues that are important to the city.”

Mock makes a similar argument. He says gatherings of municipal officials have helped him see how other cities deal with issues similar to those facing Torrance.

For example, his proposal last year to eliminate a city mosquito abatement program in favor of joining the county’s mosquito abatement district came from conversations with other elected officials, he said. The switch was eventually approved by Torrance.

“Through my interactions with other council members . . . I was able to understand how they dealt with the problem and what our program was lacking,” said Mock, who was chairman of the city’s Public Safety Committee. “We had always resisted joining the district because of the costs involved.”

Mock also said he often had to travel when he was vice president of the Independent Cities Assn., a grouping of municipal officials from Los Angeles County.

“I was active in the city and in these organizations because I thought it was worthwhile,” Mock said. “I don’t think I was spending the taxpayers’ money willy-nilly.”

Speaking of his Washington visit in March, Mock said he “did the city a service by going on that trip” even though he had already been voted out of office. Asked what that service was, he answered: “I was representing the city. . . . I was there, I attended a couple of dinners, I met with the mayor of Fresno and we talked about issues.”

The Perks of Office Over the years, the city of Torrance has paid for travel by council members on city-related business to places such as Las Vegas, San Francisco and Yosemite National Park. Here is how much was spent on out-of-town during the past two fiscal years by council members: Mayor Katy Geissert, Bill Applegate, Dee Hardison, Timothy Mock, George Nakano, Dan Walker and Mark Wirth. Geissert 1991-92: $690 1990-91: $1,501 Applegate 1991-92: $2,476 1990-91: $3,084 Hardison 1991-92: 0 1990-91: 0 Mock* 1991-92: $4,501 1990-91: $5,982 Nakano 1991-92: $3,971 1990-91: $2,462 Walker* 1991-92: $1,650 1990-91: $5,112 Wirth 1991-92: $4, 750 1990-91: $5,183 Source: City of Torrance * No longer on the council