Mayor’s Office Moves to Scrap 10-Nation Tour : Travel: Decision is in response to criticism from the city controller’s office. More than a dozen harbor officials had signed up for the Asian trip.

Following another intense round of criticism of travel by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and his appointees, the mayor’s office announced Thursday that it will ask for the cancellation of a 10-nation Asian and Pacific tour by harbor officials.

The announcement came just hours after City Controller Rick Tuttle launched another offensive against travel by the Bradley Administration.

“Not since the island hopping campaign of Douglas MacArthur in World War II have there been so many Yanks in the South Pacific,” Tuttle said of the plans submitted by Harbor Department officials. “The air transport out there would be groaning under the weight of mayoral appointees.”

The mayor’s office had no idea of the scope of the proposed trip until receiving warnings Thursday afternoon from Tuttle’s office, a spokeswoman said.

“The number of people scheduled to be traveling on this tour does seem to be excessive. There does seem to be little justification for a 10-nation tour by 14 people,” said Vallee Bunting. “The trip, in this form, is unacceptable and we will ask for it to be scrapped.”

Bunting said those sentiments will be passed on to Harbor Department Executive Director Ezunial Burts, who had received a memo from Tuttle earlier in the day threatening to kill funding for the trip.

Bradley is midway through a two-week, four-city European tour to promote trade and tourism. That $250,000 jaunt had already been criticized by Tuttle and others as extravagant.

The mayor had tentatively planned on joining the Asian trip but had been weighing it against concerns about the outcome of the federal trial of four police officers accused of violating Rodney G. King’s civil rights, Bunting said.

The mayor would consider going along now only if the tour is greatly pared back, Bunting said.

The Harbor Department’s tentative plans call for the tour to begin April 9 in New Zealand and to continue through the end of the month to Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and China.

Just one or two Harbor Department employees would visit some of the destinations, but the trip would culminate with an entourage of 11 visiting Tokyo to complete an agreement on a $180-million coal exporting facility for the Port of Los Angeles.

Tuttle’s office had issued guidelines limiting travel, calling for no more than two commissioners to visit any destination. But the Asian trip would violate that rule, with four commissioners visiting Hong Kong and three visiting Japan and Singapore.

“I am skeptical of the rationale for this trip,” Tuttle wrote in a letter to port director Burts.

Tuttle added in an interview that the same business could be conducted by far fewer city officials. The controller, up for reelection next month, also said contacts between Bradley appointees and foreign officials are of limited value because the appointees will leave office June 30 with Bradley.

But Julia Nagano, a spokeswoman for the Port of Los Angeles, said so many officials had been slated for the trip because they had built close working relationships with foreign officials on contracts that will bring millions of dollars to Los Angeles.

“In the Far East, they are very conscious of the person we send to seal an agreement and to seal a deal,” Nagano said. “That must be considered too.”

If harbor officials decide to stick with their travel plans, Tuttle is demanding a “detailed justification” of the trip by noon Monday.