Ventura Official Pushes Travel Cost Controls : Government: Steve Bennett contends spending by council colleagues needs tighter scrutiny. Some guidelines are approved.

A day after the City Council shot down a proposal to monitor its own travel expenses, Councilman Steve Bennett continued his fight for limits, saying his colleagues’ spending is unchecked and in need of tighter scrutiny.

Until Monday, the city had no guidelines governing how much public money a council member could spend on travel--an omission that concerned Bennett and other city officials.

“If a council member wants to go somewhere and call it council business, they can,” Bennett said Tuesday. “We don’t have a system.”

During Monday’s council meeting, Bennett suggested creating a rule in which the council would have to approve every trip for which expenses exceed $250. The council majority rejected the idea 5 to 2.

“I don’t know of any abuse,” Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures said. “I think we are getting too finite in the process.”

So far this year, council members have spent about $9,100 on conferences, out-of-town meals and hotels.

Among the biggest trips was a recent three-day meeting with department store managers in Dallas and St. Louis, for which Mayor Jack Tingstrom and Councilman Jim Friedman spent $2,612 on air fare and hotel accommodations.

City Manager Donna Landeros and Assistant City Manager Steve Chase also went on the trip, which was paid for from an account earmarked for the proposed Buenaventura Mall expansion.

In the past year, the city also spent $1,700 to send former Mayor Tom Buford and former Councilman Greg Carson to an October conference in San Francisco, records show.

The city paid another $1,536 to send Buford to a conference in Sacramento and $198 to send Carson’s parents to San Jose to accept an award on his behalf, according to travel receipts.

Tingstrom spent the most money on travel expenses in 1995--$2,393, records show. The city paid $1,107 for a July redevelopment seminar in Monterey and $826 for a January trip to Scottsdale, Ariz., that Tingstrom took with developer John Hofer to scout sporting complexes.

Tingstrom said Tuesday that such trips allow council members to get ideas from other cities. “It is invaluable, the networking that goes on,” he said.

But Bennett argues that expenditures should be authorized by the City Council. “I think there must be some method of checking council members’ expenditures,” he said. “If the trips are legitimate, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

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Tingstrom, however, said Bennett’s policy would unnecessarily bog down council meetings. And he argued that travel expenses are public records that can be obtained at any time.

“If you think I am being excessive,” Tingstrom said, “you can pull them and bring them up here. That is the check I see right now.”

Gary Tuttle was the only council member to vote with Bennett in supporting the proposal, which would have been an amendment to other expense guidelines proposed by Landeros on Monday.

“This has bothered me for six years,” Tuttle said Monday night, praising Bennett’s proposal. “It protects us all. It protects the public; it protects the city manager.”

In a compromise move, Councilman Jim Monahan suggested that the council review its members’ expense records every three months. That plan was approved 5 to 2, this time with Tingstrom and Councilman Ray Di Guilio dissenting.

Landeros recommended the guidelines for travel expenses after learning that the city’s policy had not been revised in 20 years and contained no limits on meals or other expenses accrued by elected city officials.

“I was kind of surprised that we did not have set guidelines,” Landeros said Tuesday.

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Less than a year into the job, the city manager also learned that she was put in a position of having to scrutinize how much council members were spending on trips--a role in which she is not comfortable, she told the council Monday.

“I don’t think it is appropriate for the city manager, who is paid by the City Council, to be in the position of authorizing their travel,” Landeros said again Tuesday afternoon.

Landeros, however, recently questioned former Councilman Carson, who had turned in receipts for meals he had during the October trip to the League of California Cities Conference in San Francisco.

Carson submitted receipts for a $166 dinner at one restaurant, and Landeros authorized a reimbursement of $25. Carson also turned in receipts for a $148 lunch and another $76 dinner. The city reimbursed $15 for the lunch and $28 for the dinner.

Landeros sent a memorandum to Carson explaining that the city would only pay a limited amount for meals: $10 for breakfast, $15 for lunch and $25 for dinner.

But Carson said he never expected full reimbursement. “There was no expectation of the city paying for those meals. It came out of my own pocket,” he said.

In its 5-2 vote Monday, the council approved guidelines similar to those outlined in Landeros’ Nov. 29 memo to Carson.

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Those restrictions state that council members can spend only $40 a day on meals while traveling on city business. Air travel is restricted to coach or economy class. And hotel accommodations should be moderately priced.

Out-of-town expenditures are paid separately through council members’ monthly travel allowances--$300 for the mayor and $200 for each council member, totaling $18,000 a year. Allowances are awarded in addition to council salaries, which total $53,000 a year.

When Monday’s meeting adjourned shortly before 11 p.m., the council members wished one another happy holidays and left for a two-week break.

But Bennett said he plans to take no respite from his quest to bring stronger scrutiny to council spending.

“I think there must be some method of checking council members’ expenditures,” he said. “I will still continue to search for a system that will give us an effective safeguard.”