Official to Present Expense Reports : Burbank: Council member says the travel records don’t match those turned over to prosecutors by airport commissioners.

A City Council member says he will present a county grand jury with copies of travel expense reports by Burbank Airport commissioners that he contends do not match those surrendered by airport officials in response to a subpoena.

Councilman Bob Kramer said Tuesday he found discrepancies when he compared copies of expense claims he obtained last year with copies of reports of the same trips turned over to prosecutors earlier this month.

Airport officials flatly denied any wrongdoing took place. They said copies of some documents given to Kramer at his request last year were still being processed, and additional information was routinely added later--showing up only on the copies provided to the grand jury.

While no monetary amounts appeared to have been changed, Kramer said he believes new information was improperly added to make the documents look more complete for the grand jury.

“Basically, there’s a trust issue,” Kramer said. “This is a public entity that is altering public records. . . . They were so lax that they didn’t even follow their own policy.”

Kramer said that on at least five of the grand jury copies, date stamps and signatures are present that do not appear on copies that Kramer obtained last year as a private citizen.

Under an unwritten policy of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, the signature of either Airport Controller Dios Marrero or Airport Director Tom Greer is required before a commissioner can be reimbursed for travel expenses, according to Greer. The authority’s president is also responsible for approving any business trips.

Greer said the Airport Authority keeps several copies of commissioners’ original expense reports and that Kramer was simply given duplicates of documents last year before they could be reviewed and signed by himself or Marrero.

The grand jury, he added, received copies of the final reports, which were stamped and dated by the airport’s accounting office.

“All the expense reports were signed at the appropriate time,” Greer said, adding that it sometimes takes as long as a month before he or Marrero can review and sign the forms. “None of the signatures were added in any inappropriate time.”

The 1992-95 expense reports of Burbank Airport commissioners had been subpoenaed by the grand jury in response to one or more complaints about use of public funds for business travel.

The grand jury’s action came nearly a year after current City Council member Ted McConkey, acting as a private citizen, formally complained about the authority’s practice of allowing commissioners to bring their spouses on business trips for free.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to discuss the alleged discrepancies.

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Kramer said he did not believe Greer’s explanation for why the documents he obtained last year appear to be different than the ones turned over to the grand jury.

“Some of the records I got were over 18 months old,” Kramer said. “So what they’re trying to tell me is that a year after the expenses were made, [the report] still hadn’t made its rounds. I don’t believe their explanation.

“I’m sending my records to the grand jury and I’m gonna let the grand jury determine if the Airport Authority is telling the truth.”

Both Kramer and McConkey have been vocal critics of local government frequently questioning the practices of officials not only on the Airport Authority, but of those within Burbank City Hall. Both were elected to the City Council earlier this year and took office in May.