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Seattle Post Intelligencer - U
22 November 2006

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Have city job, will travel

First there was the trip to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest film and music festival. Next, James Keblas jetted to San Francisco and Hollywood to investigate nightlife. Then it was off to Scotland for Cineposium, an international film industry conference. In January, the director of the Mayor's Office for Film and Music headed to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah for six days.

Records show that Keblas spent almost $11,000 in taxpayer money on travel during his first nine months in office.

He wasn't the only well-traveled city employee.

Last year, hundreds of Seattle employees racked up $2.4 million in out-of-city travel expenses, including $909,000 spent by Seattle City Light, the city-run electric utility. But despite its travel bills, the city has no computerized database or central oversight of employee travel. In fact, travel has not been audited citywide in 10 years.

And that means few expenses are questioned outside of individual departments, leaving the city's nearly 40 department managers to unilaterally OK conference, workshop and training travel -- often in far-flung or fun destinations.

In 2004 and 2005, after a 2003 citywide travel freeze, Seattle city employees, council members and the mayor traveled internationally to study transportation, education and economic issues, attend conferences and tour plants and facilities. Destinations included Mexico, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Ecuador, Scotland, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and France.

They also went to Las Vegas, Anaheim, Calif., San Francisco, Orlando, Fla., Reno, Nev., Washington D.C., New Orleans and Denver. They routinely stayed at the Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham hotels, but also at Walt Disney World Resort, Caesars Palace, Mandalay Bay Resort and a long list of other resorts hosting conferences, training and trade shows.

Hotel rooms nearing $200 per night were routine for many.

According to a sampling of city records, in the last three years, the city paid for at least 22 trips to Australia for city employees and elected officials, with a total cost of about $120,000.

The need for travel

The city defends its travel costs by pointing out that, unlike many other cities, Seattle runs its own electric utility. City officials also say travel is part of doing business; conferences and training keep workers up to date and allow them to network with their counterparts in other cities. And, they say, Seattle's location makes it more expensive to get to places.

Travel spending is a small percentage of the city's total budget, less than 1 percent, and much travel isn't optional or discretionary, but required for state or federal reasons.

Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis agrees that Keblas visits some interesting places.

"There is a reason for that -- it is his job. He gets to do things that seem a little out of the ordinary for a city employee," he said.

Ceis said Friday that the city hasn't analyzed its travel spending compared with other cities and doesn't see much value in it. "I do think the city overall has done well controlling travel costs. Our trajectory has been pretty good."

But harder to defend might be the city's system for tracking travel.

City Council questions

As a result of the Seattle P-I's questions about globetrotting city workers, Council President Nick Licata called last week for an audit of travel spending, policies and procedures.

"It raises the kind of questions I asked the auditor to look at," said Licata, referring to trips to Australia between 2004 and 2006.

"We do need common rules on how we judge whether travel is necessary or of benefit to the city," Licata said. "I assume there is a good paper trail, that the records are kept on computers and are accessible."

City Auditor Susan Cohen estimates that it will take at least six months for an audit, during which her office will scrutinize whether the city is getting the best value, and where and why employees travel.

She expects to start the audit around the first of next year and said international travel will be getting a close look. "Once in a while there are some legitimate reasons why employees would travel out of the country," she said, adding that although travel is a fraction of the city's budget, it is worth scrutinizing.

"The No. 1 asset of the city government is the respect of its citizens. Protecting that asset is crucial," she said.

David Williams, with Citizens Against Government Waste, based in Washington D.C., said travel is a small part of most government budgets, but he said that doesn't mean it shouldn't be subject to checks and balances.

"The small things add up; you have to have accountability," said Williams, who has been with the watchdog group since 1984.

"Everyone loves to travel, and when someone else pays for it, that is even better," he said.

Most of Keblas' trips are discretionary. But his travels are credited with wooing "Butterfly Dreaming" to Seattle for filming, contributing $35,000 daily for 21 days to the area's economy. His travel also helped bring the TV show "Grey's Anatomy" to film in Seattle for 12 days this year, contributing $85,000 per day, Bronwyn Edwards, a department spokeswoman, said last week.

Tracking the travel
In early January, the Seattle P-I requested access to city travel records, receipts and related documents. Many smaller departments quickly provided the documents, but for larger offices it was time-consuming to gather the records, sort and copy them, and block out personal information. Seattle City Light estimated that it would take up to 12 months to provide such records.

In all, the city provided 167,000 pages to review, with only a few pages available electronically.

After a review of a sample of the records, it is hard to say how well reimbursements are tracked -- an uncashed check was found among records from one department -- or how accurately credit card charges are monitored. Employees aren't required to provide receipts if they are given an allowance in advance for food.

Seattle's accounting system is not designed to track full trips or retain detailed breakdowns of employee travel; it tracks only total amounts of direct travel expenses such as airplane tickets, hotels and food, according to city officials.

"I'm just responsible for specifying the manner of the reimbursement," said Director Ken Nakatsu of the Department of Executive Administration, which oversees city business and financial services.

The city does have an online travel authorization form on which employees type in where they are going, travel dates and the cost of the airplane ticket.

However, instead of retaining the information for tracking travel, the information is erased once the employee prints the form. Also, forms used vary somewhat by departments, as does the process for review and oversight.

Receipts aren't required for meals on the road, and meal allowance can be figured two ways, using a standard formula, or a federal per diem rate, usually reserved for managers and directors, but not always.

Individual city departments could set up their own tracking systems if they want, Nakatsu said, but that would require assigning staff members to re-enter the information from the paper forms into a database. The cost, compared with the benefits, becomes a consideration, he said.

Travel spending can be calculated in different ways, depending whom you ask.

In Keblas' office, travel spending for 2005 was calculated at about $33,000. However, the city's Finance Department reports that the office's travel spending was just $22,351. The lower number doesn't include registration fees for workshops or conferences.

Seattle City Light doesn't include registration fees in its total travel-spending figure, either. Last year, registration fees for conferences attended by Seattle City Light employees totaled almost $461,000

The Seattle Ethics and Elections Office starts with one question when it investigates complaints about travel, or other ethics issues -- "How does this appear to a reasonable person?" said Wayne Barnett, director of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

In August 2003, four Seattle municipal judges were fined by the ethics office and ordered to reimburse the city after a fellow traveler reported that they were playing hooky from workshops at a judicial conference in Maui, Hawaii. Each judge paid between $200 and $500 for skipping sessions taxpayers paid them to attend.

What is reasonable?

The "reasonable person" question was on Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske's mind when he paid his own airfare in 2005 to attend a police chiefs meeting in popular vacation spot Hawaii.

"I said, 'I'm not comfortable billing the city for that,' " he said.

However, Kerlikowske did let the city pay for an $1,800, last-minute ticket to Washington D.C., after the attorney general asked him to meet immediately about immigration issues.

"When the attorney general says he wants to talk to you about immigration, you better get there," said Kerlikowske, who stayed overnight and returned to Seattle the next day.

The Seattle Police Department scrutinizes its records more closely than some other city departments. Included in its travel forms are notes from its accountant insisting on receipts, asking if a rental car really was needed, suggesting ways to save money or reprimanding an officer for canceling a trip still seeking expenses from the department.

Kerlikowske said he also reviews department travel. "I look at the airfare, rental car, hotel expenses, on a quarterly basis. I scan it. I ask if there was justification for the travel," he said. "It was loosey-goosey when I got here. I made a lot of changes. ... I'm not afraid to say, 'Sorry.' "

Several people are rarely sent to one conference. Instead, an expert is brought to Seattle for less money and trains a group here.

A big exception was a group of 25 sent to Washington, D.C., when fallen police Officer Jackson Lone's name was inscribed on a memorial wall in May. Lone, an 18-year Police Department veteran, drowned while on duty last year in the Lake Washington Ship Canal.

"We felt it was pretty important to have a presence there," Kerlikowske said. He said that even though travel spending is a fraction of his department's total budget, it deserves close attention.

"Some things aren't controllable. Travel costs you have control over," he said.

At the Seattle Public Library, a committee reviews its travel requests and caps travel expenses at $600 per employee, said spokeswoman Andra Addison.

But even with the extra oversight, employees manage to travel to exotic locales with a little help from taxpayers.

Linda Saunto, a part-time cookbook librarian, used her travel allotment to attend a Mexico Culinary Experience in Villahermosa, Mexico. She stayed a few days longer on personal vacation. The trip came just months after the library system was shut down because of a budget shortfall, and Mayor Greg Nickels announced a freeze on employee travel that would last 18 months.

City cutbacks, mayoral trips

"When we were deepest into our budget crisis, we wanted to make sure we reduced all of our expenses, including travel. It sends an important message to departments about controlling expenditures," Ceis, the deputy mayor, said Friday.

But despite the freeze, several hundred trips were taken, including some to international destinations, even as human services were cut, city libraries closed for weeks at a time, jobs were eliminated and park maintenance was reduced. In an effort to pay for city services, sewer, water and parking meter rates increased. Street and bridge maintenance was postponed, and new book purchases by libraries were reduced.

After several years of declining gradually to a low of $1.9 million in 2004, travel costs edged up again, totaling $2.4 million in 2005, according to city records.

During 2004 and 2005, the mayor and his staff still managed $43,828 in jet-setting, according to city records.

In May, Nickels and his wife, Sharon; his bodyguard; Ceis; and a city employee from the Department of International Relations, went to Australia as part of the Seattle Chamber's study mission.

Sharon Nickels paid her own travel expenses. The Seattle Police Department picked up the tab for bodyguard Joe Bouffiou, and the Office of International Relations paid the way for employee Keith Orton. The cost of the trip ranged from $5,300 to $5,600 per person.

In Australia, Nickels' itinerary included visits to a wildlife sanctuary and the Yarra Valley wine region, lectures on the role of modern-day zoos, economic development in Australia, environmental practices and toll roads.

Nickels also planned to chat informally during the trip with Port of Seattle commissioners, who also were on the study mission, to lock in the port's contribution to the Alaskan Way Viaduct's replacement with a tunnel.

The Nickelses continued on to New Zealand -- an extra $770 charge to the city for the mayor's travel costs.

Council travel

In the last three years, City Council members have traveled to destinations including Ireland, the Philippines, Australia, San Diego, Indianapolis and Las Vegas.

And during 2004 and 2005, council members and their staff members spend more than double the mayor's travel expenses, racking up a total of about $96,600.

Trips to Australia organized by the Seattle Chamber in 2006 for Councilmen Licata and Peter Steinbrueck cost more than $5,000 each.

"You can be inspired, I want to be open to that. I don't consider them a junket," Steinbrueck said of the trips, adding that council members and city employees need to be mindful about time spent away from the office while traveling.

During a 2004 Las Vegas trip, costing about $400 each for Steinbrueck and Councilman Tom Rasmussen, the two studied that city's new monorail system. Seattle was planning its own at the time.

But Councilwoman Jean Godden was the council's frequent flier of 2005, with a $10,491 travel bill for the city. She notes that she didn't go anywhere the year before, and has been only to Spokane this year.

The priciest trip for Godden was a trade development and study mission to Ireland that then expanded to include Poland.

"We worked hard in Ireland," Godden said. "We had to be out at 8 a.m. to get on the bus or we would be left behind for good."

In Ireland, Godden learned about the country's booming economy, as well as details about transportation issues and education. She also learned that City Hall in Belfast has three bars.

"Some of us sampled some of the beer -- it's Guinness -- but otherwise we worked very hard," she said.

In 2004, six Seattle Public Utilities division directors traveled to Australia and New Zealand to study other water utilities. In 2005, a team of five division directors went to Australia. Each trip was two weeks long. The total cost for both years was more than $51,000. Five more people went this year, costing the city $29,000.

James Keblas, director of the Mayor's Office of Film and Music, traveled to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest music festival, San Francisco and Hollywood to investigate nightlife; Glasgow, Scotland, for Cineposium; and Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival. He spent nearly $11,000 on travel his first nine months on the job.

Councilwoman Jean Godden spent $11,146 in city money traveling in 2004 and 2005. Her travels included Ireland to look at transportation, education and housing. In Poland, she delivered a statue and looked at sewage treatment. San Francisco, Vancouver and Spokane were other destinations.

Seattle City Employees Retirement Board members attend a five-day conference annually, often bringing spouses or other traveling companions. In 2004, they stayed at the Anaheim Hilton. In 2005, they stayed at Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, where the department's interim director charged the city for five nights in a hotel room at $315 per night. Expenses for each, paid by the city, ranged from $1,500 to more than $2,100, depending how long they stayed.

PAPER TRAIL ONLY
Since the city has no central oversight for employee travel, the Seattle P-I's request in January for access to city travel records, documents and receipts for 2004 and 2005 were made to individual departments.

The records, which include travel request forms, expense claims, receipts for hotels, airfare and other expenses, are available on paper only, rather than in a central computer database.

It was the first time in recent memory that the city has received such a request, said Katherine Schubert-Knapp, public disclosure officer for the city's Finance Department.

Many smaller city departments quickly provided the documents, but for larger ones, it was time-consuming to find, sort and copy records, then black out personal information. Public Disclosure Officer Nancy Craver said city workers spent 2,300 hours compiling the records and removing personal information.

Thousands of documents for many -- but not all -- departments were reviewed by the P-I, some closely, some quickly. More boxes of records in other departments still are waiting to be read.

While many department managers and employees spoke freely about travel requirements and accountability, others refused to comment or didn't return requests for comments. Some officials simply did not know the answers to travel-related questions.

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Article sourced from

Seattle Post Intelligencer - U22 November 2006

Have city job, will travel

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Seattle Post Intelligencer - U
22 November 2006