When Frugality Is Saintliness : All Cabinet members travel . . . but obviously not in the same style

Cabinet secretaries and other senior federal officials aren’t doing their jobs properly if they spend too much time in Washington. To be effective, to stay on top of their jobs, heads of departments and agencies should regularly attend meetings outside of the capital and visit the facilities they administer. Senior officials of the Clinton Administration do move around. Some, as it happens, move in considerable style. The highest of the high fliers in the first two years of the Administration has been Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary.

As documents obtained by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act show, the median cost of domestic trips by O’Leary has been 90% higher than the median cost reported by her most frugal colleague, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. In 1993-94 O’Leary made 61 domestic trips, averaging three days each, at a median cost of $671 for transportation, lodging and meals. Shalala, taking 87 trips averaging two days each, billed the government at a median cost of $353, while Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros reported a median cost of $387 for his 118 trips.

What accounts for this considerable difference? For one thing, O’Leary--citing special circumstances--likes to upgrade the coach seat that government travel rules call for to business or first class. For another, she likes to stay in the tonier hotels. In late 1993, for example, O’Leary traveled to Boston and stayed at the Four Seasons at a cost of $335 a day. When Carol M. Browner, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, went to Boston a year later she made do with an $83-a-day hotel room.

Among the special circumstances O’Leary cites for her bigger expense accounts is the need to work in comfort on longer flights, comfort being an airliner seat someplace other than in coach. But of course all Cabinet members work while flying, in nearly every case while traveling coach class. O’Leary also travels with a considerably larger retinue than her colleagues, at costs also billed to the taxpayers. U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, another official with a big job, managed to travel alone or with a single aide on two-thirds of his domestic trips.

O’Leary says she spent $14,500 of her own money on travel, over the nearly $50,000 she billed the government. That out-of-pocket spending was her own choice, however. The fact is the government provides adequate reimbursement for expenses, as her colleagues’ vouchers make clear; upgrades are a matter of comfort, not need. In an era of layoffs and widespread downsizing, O’Leary’s high travel expenses look bad. It’s time for the secretary to travel in a bit less style.