Republicans Criticize Two Democrats Over Trips

For the second time in a year, a pair of Democratic lawmakers--one a rising political star from Los Angeles, the other a veteran from the Central Valley forced to leave office in a few weeks--have packed their bags to join a taxpayer-subsidized trade mission to South Africa this week.

One of the legislators, Assemblyman Kevin Murray of Los Angeles, also has been given approval to fly back to South Africa at taxpayers’ expense in less than a month, according to state records.

Murray, who is seeking reelection Nov. 5, also has won authorization for the state to pay for his lodging in Tokyo in December while visiting the state’s trade office in Japan.

In a letter earlier this week, Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) admonished Murray for globe-trotting, saying he has “taken a disproportionate number of trips out of the country.”

Nonetheless, Pringle authorized the requests on the condition that Murray believes the travel is an appropriate government expenditure that would benefit constituents in his Baldwin Hills area district.

John Nelson, Pringle’s spokesman, took the criticism a step further, saying the upcoming trips “appear to be junkets, but if that’s the way Kevin Murray and the Democrats want to allocate their portion of the Assembly resources that’s their choice, but it’s a bad choice.”

In a telephone interview from South Africa, Murray said he was being unfairly singled out for a warning by Pringle.

“If any member chooses to travel rather than send inordinate amounts of mail to constituents, as the Republicans have done, that’s the member’s choice how they manage their office,” Murray said.

Murray, who plans to fly home today, described the letter, signed by a Pringle aide, as “sort of insulting,” saying “my constituents are very interested in trade with South Africa” and that the funds are coming out of his office budget, not general Assembly housekeeping funds.

Murray, who is also an attorney and talent agent whose district includes film studios, said movies are a major export to South Africa and that he has been invited back to a film festival next month.

He added, however, that his travel plans are not fixed. “It actually remains to be seen whether I will go,” he said, adding that the Japan trip merely is under discussion. Murray is only seeking a state subsidy for his hotel, not his travel, which he says would come from other sources.

Last week, Murray and Assemblyman Sal Cannella of Ceres joined a three-member delegation organized by Gov. Pete Wilson’s Trade and Commerce Agency to promote business with South Africa through meetings and seminars in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

The mission is headed by Brenda Lopes, a deputy Trade and Commerce Agency secretary, and is targeting senior corporate executives.

The excursion to South Africa could cost as much as $30,000.

A year ago, the two lawmakers were members of a larger delegation that made a similar trip that came under fire as being too costly. That trip included five top Wilson Administration officials and was designed to drum up trade for California with the emerging democracies of sub-Saharan Africa.

Pringle aides estimated that the legislative share of the current 10-day trip could reach $16,000. The trip is commemorating the one-year anniversary of the opening of California’s South Africa trade office.

The price tag includes a nonrefundable $2,400 airline ticket purchased for Murray’s father, lame-duck Assemblyman Willard Murray of Paramount, according to Assembly Rules Committee Chief Administrative Officer Jim Richardson.

The elder Murray, who decided he could not spend the time overseas, said on Thursday that he believes the Assembly will be reimbursed for the cost of his ticket.

Cannella, who was barred from seeking reelection by term limits but plans to run for the state Senate in 1998, said the Wilson administration invited him back to South Africa.

“I get paid until Dec. 3 and I’m going to do my job like I always have,” Cannella said, adding that his constituents “deserve my time 24 hours a day.”

A onetime tool and die maker first elected in 1990, Cannella said he is following up on contacts he made last year. Cannella said this week that, when he learned that South Africa has a chicken shortage, he began scrambling to get in touch with poultry producers in his agriculture-oriented Central Valley district.

Assemblyman Steve Kuykendall (R-Rancho Palos Verdes), a critic of government waste, questioned Cannella’s role on the trip.

“I think it’s outrageous that a termed-out legislator is taking a $16,000 trip to South Africa . . . to me that’s absolutely an abuse of office.”