Tuesday, October 6, 2015

[Solano County] A ticket to ride: Lure of tax-funded travel endures

Blog Note: This article references a 2013 grand jury report. Note, at the end of the article, that the grand jury appears to have had a significant impact on the issues raised.
FAIRFIELD — Five people from Fairfield city government traveled to Silicon Valley for a three-day League of California Cities conference that ended Friday – a trip that was a tiny part of the $698,000 budgeted for training, travel and conferences this year, the city’s finance director says.
Fred Marsh said that six-figure total is only 0.3 percent of Fairfield’s budget and City Manager David White said the spending includes mandated training for public safety employees.
The travel this week by White, administrative analyst Dawn La Bar, City Council members Catherine Moy, Rick Vaccaro and Chuck Timm, to the conference in San Jose, is one of the rare trips taken by Fairfield’s elected officials, the city manager said.
“Our council does very little travel,” White said. “This is the one event they go to.”
The city manager said he’s attended two other conferences this year, one in San Francisco for city managers and a conference in Monterey by the Association of Defense Communities that’s important because of Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield.
Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in California, doesn’t buy the it’s-a-small-percentage-of-spending argument to defend travel by city councils and school boards.
In almost any government budget, Vosburgh said, even 0.3 percent is a significant amount.
“How many textbooks does that buy?” he asked.
Moreover, public officials hear from their staffs about the importance of the trips they take but not from the people who pay for travel, said Vosburgh.
“If they were to have coffee with people in the neighborhood and ask them about it, they’d say no,” he said of what taxpayers think about funding government travel.
The public, Vosburgh said, questions travel costs but those taking the trips rarely do.
“You tend to get people running for office who like attention. There’s a little bit of narcissism in most officials,” said Vosburgh. “They think it’s OK that money be spent on them.”
Fairfield spent $559,000 for training, travel and conferences last fiscal year, $40,000 less than budgeted because of unplanned staffing vacancies, the city said.
Vacaville spent $194,740 on training and travel over the last fiscal year, according to figures supplied by the city. Vacaville has budgeted $225,552 for this fiscal year.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated Fairfield’s population in 2014 at 111,125. Vacaville’s population was an estimated 95,856.
Costs for travel and conferences, including professional development for teachers, in the Fairfield-Suisun School District in fiscal year 2014-15 were $606,966. The school district paid $8,336 for administrators and school board members to stay at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco and attend the California School Boards Association conference in December 2014.
Sheila McCabe, director of administrative services for the Fairfield-Suisun School District, said the California School Boards Association negotiated a special conference rate with six hotels and that the Palace, along with Westin St. Francis, was the lowest.
The conference in San Francisco was “an outstanding educational program where participants learn practical solutions” that help the school district improve student learning and achievement, she said.
Professional development for teachers, McCabe said, “provides the district and community with a great return on investment.”
Travel and conference costs are less than half of 1 percent of total school district spending, she said.
The Vacaville School District, which does not pay for lodging on trips within 75 miles of Vacaville, covered travel but not lodging costs for people who attended the conference in San Francisco.
Vacaville’s school district budget – about half that of the Fairfield-Suisun district’s – had a travel and conference budget last fiscal year of $219,700, according to figures supplied by the Vacaville School District.
Travis School District spent $95,158 for travel and conferences in 2014-15.
The California Department of Education reports that students enrollment in the Fairfield-Suisun School District in 2014-15 was 21,266. The Vacaville School District had 12,837 students and the Travis School District had 5,398 students.
Suisun City Mayor Pete Sanchez said attending conferences is part of the job.
“It’s really no vacation,” Sanchez said. “It’s a tedious task.”
“You’re away from family for three or four days,” the mayor said.
Such travel is not the issue some people try to make of it, Sanchez said.
“In 20 years in office, no one has called me, or emailed me, or written me or faxed me about my going to conferences,” he said.
If it’s an issue, Sanchez asked, why has no one campaigned against incumbents based on their travel?
Suisun City resident George Guynn Jr. of the Central Solano Citizen-Taxpayer Group said government-paid travel persists in part because the public seems indifferent to the issue.
“I don’t see that many showing up,” Guynn said of residents at local government meetings. “If you get a room full of people, politicians are a lot different.”
Suisun City budgets for Peace Officer Standards Training and other travel and training separately. In the last fiscal year, the city spent $15,002 on law enforcement training and $24,183 on other training and travel.
The Fairfield-Suisun Sewer District, subject in 2013 of a Solano County grand jury report about the $135,169 spent on conferences and travel between 2010-12 to Newport Beach, Monterey and other cities, reported such spending the last fiscal year totaled $13,031.
Sewer district board travel costs represent 0.07 percent of revenue and the equivalent of 26 cents yearly per customer, the district said.
Fairfield Councilwoman Moy said she doesn’t think it’s necessary for the city to send five people to the San Jose conference held by the League of California Cities, but that the event, one of the few she said she attends, is worthwhile.
Moy is struck by where conferences are held and understands the skepticism many in the public hold for travel by public officials.
“Let’s face it, most of these conferences end up at pretty nice hotels,” the councilwoman said. “If they were at a Motel 6 in Bakersfield, I don’t know if you would get such a strong presence.”
Twelve employees of the Fairfield-Suisun School District went last month to Skywalker Ranch in Marin County for a Computer Using Educators conference where a Fairfield-Suisun administrator was among the presenters. He did not have to pay the $475 conference fee.
Lodging costs are not yet available for the three-day event.
A website for the Rock Star administrator camps refers to taking the ultimate hero’s journey at Skywalker Ranch at the event to assist “administrators in leading the changes that are most pressing in K-12 education right now: deploying devices, changing classroom pedagogies, leading change, social media challenges and skills for leaders.”
Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, writing this month about travel by state officials and others said, “It seems strange that so many ‘important’ conferences take place in locations like Hawaii.”
Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association Director Vosburgh said if officials had to spend their own money for lodging that they might end up staying at a Motel 6.
He recalled a former California governor referring to the $15 million the state spent on an arts council as “peanuts” that only represented 40 cents from each taxpayer.
Vosburgh’s response was, “They’re boxcar loads of those peanuts” and that such government spending involves substantial taxpayer money.
Public reaction to free trips for officials is more than just envy at travel to San Francisco, Silicon Valley and other sites, he said.
If a government spends hundreds of thousands of dollars that way, where else is money going with no direct benefit to the taxpayer, Vosburgh asked. The tolerance officials show for travel reflects the political world that when entered, justifies spending the public sees as excessive, he said.
“When people are elected they are told by everyone that they are important,” Vosburgh said.
“This can be intoxicating,” he said.
The antidote, according to Vosburgh, is to put a spotlight on travel by public officials – an effort the Solano County grand jury said in its report on the sewer district made a difference.
“The grand jury has noted a significant drop in the number of attendees to various conferences since the public reporting of the issue and associated costs,” its 2013 report said.
October 4, 2015
Fairfield Daily Republic
By Ryan McCarthy


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