With County in Turmoil, 4 Supervisors Off to Cuba

In recent weeks, as Los Angeles County has made plans for layoffs, hospital closures and budget cutbacks, four of five county supervisors have taken the opportunity to get a firsthand look at some of the vexing problems -- facing Cuba.

Traveling under the auspices of a local academic group, Supervisor Gloria Molina visited the island nation in December. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky went to Cuba in March, and Don Knabe and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke took trips there in April.

Knabe and Burke were still out of town April 14 and as a result missed the unveiling of the county’s proposed 2003-04 budget, which includes plans to eliminate more than 2,000 jobs.

Three of the four trips coincided with seminars held in Cuba by the William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonprofit organization that conducts research aimed at “improving the level of political and economic participation in Latino and other underrepresented communities,” according to its Web site.

Molina’s $2,895 trip and Knabe’s $3,000 trip were paid for by the Velasquez Institute, according to its president, Antonio Gonzalez.

Burke said her husband paid for a flight from Los Angeles to Miami and that she used about $1,600 from an officeholder account to pay for flights from Miami to Cuba, where she attended events organized by the institute. Supervisors raise money for their own officeholder accounts, so that money is not part of the county budget.

Yaroslavsky, who also dipped into his officeholder account for the trip, said that his March visit had no connection to the institute and that he paid “probably a couple of thousand dollars” to visit Cuba. Yaroslavsky said his goal was to promote democratic reforms in that country. After returning, Yaroslavsky wrote an open letter to Fidel Castro calling for the release of dozens of prisoners of conscience.

The trips organized by the institute, according to Gonzalez, were part of a 16-year-old leadership development program for civic leaders that has been held in various Latin American countries including Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

“We look at U.S. foreign policy initiatives that have particular impact or benefit for the U.S. Latino community,” Gonzalez said. “We kind of go to areas where there is some policy controversy. It makes for a more interesting learning experience.”

In interviews about the trip, Burke and Knabe described visits to Cuban hospitals and farms, as well as biotechnology and sports institutes.

“I met some students from Los Angeles who are going to medical school there,” Burke said. “They get a free education and agree to work in poor areas for at least two years” when they finish school.

Knabe, who was in college during the Cuban missile crisis and said he had always heard how beautiful Cuba was, said he overcame initial reservations about going there during the war with Iraq.

“I had an opportunity to go and I went,” he said. “It’s like a time warp where the world started and ended in 1959. I met some Communist Party officials and I’m glad to be an American.”

Those reasons were not enough to convince the lone supervisor who stayed at home, Mike Antonovich, that the trips were worth it. Antonovich grumbled about the propriety of the visits, suggesting that it was wrong for supervisors to spend time in a nation under authoritarian rule.

“Castro,” Antonovich said, “has kept his country in bondage. And the oppression of his regime continues today.”

That annoyed Yaroslavsky, who fired off a terse e-mail to his colleague, who is an overseas traveler and whose wife is from China.

In his message, Yaroslavsky called Antonovich’s remarks out of line, and added: “You are in no position to know how any of us spent our time in Cuba, any more than any of us are in a position to know how you spend your time during your frequent trips to the People’s Republic of China.”

Asked about the trip, two local political consultants staked out opposing views.

“If they didn’t use public money, I’m hard-pressed to see what the problem is,” said Bill Carrick, a Los Angeles-based consultant who advises Democratic candidates nationally. “Public opinion in Los Angeles County is probably on the side of expanding relationships with Cuba.”

Arnie Steinberg, who generally works for Republicans, said: “A number of elected officials seem to view junkets as a perk that comes with the job.... These people aren’t on a foreign affairs committee.”

Yaroslavsky, who came to prominence in Los Angeles partly because of his public efforts to denounce the Soviet Union’s treatment of Jews, said he took the trip to promote a fledgling democratization movement in Cuba, and that he has traveled far and wide in the interest of democratization and human rights, listing trips he has taken to Bosnia, Romania and Mexico.

“County business does not suffer,” he said of the time supervisors were away. “The county has to function when people are ill, or in surgery or on vacation and no matter where [we are] we’re never out of touch.”