Local Lawmakers Frugal With Travel Funds : Budgets: Professional seminars and lobbying constitute virtually all of their trips, and officials say the public gets much more than its money’s worth.

Travel, often seen as a glamorous perk of elected officials, means a journey to a training session or to the hallways of Sacramento for many Ventura County lawmakers. Little wonder that most local city councils underspend their budgets for such trips.

The area’s 10 city councils spent only about $109,000 on travel last year, a Times survey found.

The County Board of Supervisors, however, expanded its travel budget for a high-profile presence not only in the state capital but in Washington. The board spent $45,900 on conferences and seminars, $5,900 more than approved in its budget.

Mayors Nao Takasugi of Oxnard and Dorill Wright of Port Hueneme join supervisors John K. Flynn and Maggie Erickson as the area’s elected officials who traveled most on government business during the year ending June 30.

However, Thousand Oaks, whose $30,000 budget for council travel was the largest of the area’s 10 cities, said it could not make its travel records available until later this week.

Takasugi spent $7,137 on seven out-of-county trips in the 1989-90 fiscal year, nearly as much as the rest of the Oxnard council combined.

Wright leads a Port Hueneme council that spent about $25,000 on business trips and seminars last year. That was more than any other budgeted amount in the county except for Thousand Oaks, which is five times as large.

The five members of the Board of Supervisors took at least 60 trips that required airline transportation or hotel accommodations over the year--46 of them by Flynn or Erickson.

Travel by local politicians has been a high-profile issue in Ventura County this year because of the controversy surrounding expenses claimed by Ventura County Community College Trustee Tom Ely.

Ely has spent more than half of the college board’s travel budget for the past two years. And county prosecutors are completing an investigation of possible misappropriation of thousands of dollars by the veteran trustee.

City and county officials dismiss Ely’s alleged excesses as an aberration in Ventura County. They say that their travel is often to professional seminars and is essential if they are to keep up with state and national issues.

Takasugi--who traveled to Orlando, Fla.; Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; Portland, Ore.; and Scottsdale, Ariz., last year--said politicians are like doctors and lawyers and must attend seminars “to keep up on the latest trends and technology.”

For example, Takasugi said Oxnard discovered an automated trash pickup system a few years ago at a conference. The system now saves the city $500,000 a year, he said.

Port Hueneme’s Mayor Wright, a former president of the California League of Cities, said he went on 17 trips last year to the league’s state and national conferences and as a member of policy committees for both.

“A goodly portion of these trips are for training seminars, so we can learn how best to do the job we were elected to do,” said Wright, a 20-year councilman who is also a member of the California Coastal Commission.

Some of his trips are for lobbying, Wright said. One to Washington several years ago led directly to a $500,000 housing grant, he said, and grants for the city’s beach park have been awarded the same way.

“That comes as the result of knowing how and where and who to make the applications to, and how to justify them,” Wright said.

Port Hueneme spent more than one-third of its $72,000 overall council budget on travel, the highest ratio in the county. Thousand Oaks set aside $30,000 of last year’s $103,000 council allocation for “travel, meetings and dues.”

Those generous travel budgets are the exceptions. Most area councils appear frugal when voting themselves money for travel.

Council travel expenses last year were $1,371 in Fillmore, $1,714 in Moorpark, $2,903 in Camarillo, $4,302 in Santa Paula, $5,965 in Simi Valley, $8,500 in Ojai and $14,062 in Ventura.

In most cases, those expenses represent only a small fraction of the councils’ total budgets. The bulk of the budgets go for salaries and health benefits, though in some cases members also receive car allowances.

In cities facing budget deficits, such as Oxnard, travel budgets are among the first things to be cut. The Oxnard council spent $15,448 on travel last year, although it had budgeted $22,746. For 1990-91, the budget for out-of-county trips is $10,500.

Midway through a difficult financial year, Oxnard council members agreed that they would pay for their own airline fares when they traveled out of state. Takasugi paid his own fare to the National League of Cities meeting in Atlanta last November, though his tab was $1,122.

In Moorpark and Fillmore, only two members in each city took trips last year.

In Fillmore, Councilman Roger Campbell was most traveled with $785 in claims. The Moorpark council used $1,714 of its $6,000 travel budget. Councilwoman Eloise Brown did spend $53.02 of expense money on two electric fans for City Council chambers.

In Santa Paula, where the council underspent its $10,000 travel budget by $4,000, the only unusual claim revealed by city records was an $8.23 phone call by Councilman John Melton from Polynesia. Records also show that council members Alfonso Uria and Kay Wilson charged 98 cents and 64 cents, respectively, to the city for phone calls last fiscal year.

Even councils in cities the size of Simi Valley and Ventura, which have 103,000 and 92,500 residents, traveled little.

Nearly all of Simi Valley’s spending paid for a March trip to the five-day National League of Cities Conference in Washington. Four council members and two city administrators attended. The bill was $7,838.

Mayor Greg Stratton said he and his colleagues could not afford to miss that chance to lobby state and federal legislators for the city’s share of funds.

“A lot of our council members are simply too busy to travel,” said Lauraine Brekke, assistant city manager in Ventura. “We have some new council members who’ve gone to a number of these meetings just to orient themselves, but mainly we’re not big travelers.”

The Ventura council spent $14,062, or 11% of its $127,214 budget, on travel. Though in office only since December, new council members Todd Collart, Cathy Bean and Gary Tuttle spent $7,766 of that. Veteran Councilman Donald Villeneuve claimed the most, $2,996 over 12 months, according to the city.

Ventura County supervisors, the only full-time members of local governing boards, not only attend training seminars and conventions, but have established themselves as authorities in matters that require county-paid travel, such as water distribution, air pollution, welfare and mental health care.

For example, Flynn is chairman of a 400-member Southern California Water Committee and co-chairman of a state committee seeking equitable distribution of the state’s water resources.

Flynn made 24 trips in 1989-90, nearly all to water conferences, at a cost of at least $6,150. Full expenses on some of his trips could not be found in county files. The county auditor’s office does not track expenses for individual supervisors but only monitors whether the board stays within its budget.

Erickson just completed a term as chairwoman of a County Supervisors Assn. of California committee on health and human services, a post Supervisor Susan K. Lacey held the year before.

About half of Erickson’s 22 trips, costing $10,341, were for meetings of the association’s executive board.

Supervisor Madge L. Schaefer, a frequent lobbyist in Sacramento two years ago, spent $5,365 in 1989-90 on seven trips, including travel to Washington, New York City and Cincinnati. Lacey’s five trips, including conferences in Cincinnati, Washington and Charlotte, N.C., cost $5,219. Retiring Supervisor James R. Dougherty--previously a participant in the county’s bond-rating sessions in New York City but suffering from illness last year--traveled just twice at a cost of $580.

The supervisors have not only seen their travel budget soar but have experienced a quadrupling of their overall budget since 1980. This year’s board budget is $2.1 million, up from $536,000 in 1979-80.

By contrast, overall county spending has only doubled during the past decade, which means that the board is spending 0.54% of the county’s general-fund budget, up from 0.29% 11 years ago. Most of the board’s budget is spent on staff salaries and benefits.

“What has happened in the last 15 years is that Ventura County has come from being a county with a more rural atmosphere and a part-time board to being an urbanized county with a full-time, very active board,” said Richard Wittenberg, chief administrative officer since 1978.

Ventura County enjoys a kind of most-favored-county status with the Legislature, partly because supervisors Flynn, Erickson, Schaefer and Lacey have lobbied leaders in person so frequently, Wittenberg said.

“When I determine that it’s appropriate to pull out the big guns,” said county lobbyist Penny Bohannon, “that’s when the supervisors get on the plane and get up here. The more we do that, the more impact we have.”

While some may dispute the value of such trips, the supervisors say gains have come from their lobbying efforts.

For example, when 10% of funding for trial courts was chopped from the state budget in July, county officials feared a loss of $1.5 million. But the reduction was negligible since Schaefer, Bohannon and Wittenberg had negotiated a guaranteed Ventura County minimum in court funding a year ago with Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

“You talk about bang for your buck,” Bohannon said. “That’s a heck of a return.”

County officials also cite a lobbying trip to Washington in February as proof of what behind-the-scenes persuasion can do. An eight-person county delegation, including Schaefer and Lacey, lobbied a congressional subcommittee to simplify applications for food stamps and aid for dependent children.

A House subcommittee invited Schaefer to testify before the panel. A month later the subcommittee created a commission to study ways to simplify application forms. A national television news program on food stamp reform will feature Schaefer and county welfare director James Isom this week, the supervisor said.

Several county officials also credit Lacey with helping to bring unique statewide pilot programs in mental health to Ventura County. One that began last July is worth $16 million over four years.

Erickson’s lobbying was primarily responsible for an extra $4 million the county got from the state for a proposed $50-million jail, Wittenberg said.

Likewise, Flynn, through his water connections, is widely credited with helping to secure an $8-million federal project that replenishes the ground-water table in the Oxnard Plain.

The costs of such connections can be seen in county travel vouchers.

Schaefer’s nine-day trip to Washington in February cost $1,782. Lacey’s cost $1,563 for five days, though she is disputing a $217-a-night rate charged at the Hyatt Regency hotel and said she hopes to refund about $500 to the county.

Lacey spent another $1,600 one month later on a second trip to Washington, this one for a National Assn. of Counties conference and to lobby on a proposed change in federal clear-air law. Erickson also attended at a cost of $1,593, including $78 for taxis and $45 for a limousine, according to a reimbursement form.

Flynn, who estimates that he spends about two days a week on water issues, took up to five trips a month last year, though most were within the state.

On one trip to Orange County, Flynn spent $184 on a flight via Los Angeles International Airport. The trip took about three hours, nearly as long as it would have taken him to drive.

“Driving to Orange County takes so long and is so wearing because of the traffic,” Flynn said Friday, calling from a water committee meeting in Orange County. “If I could fly every time, I would.”

However, documents for the supervisors’ 60 trips reveal few splurges. They sometimes took taxis instead of shuttle buses from airports, but they rarely stayed in expensive rooms and frequently shopped for competitive air fares. Lacey paid $298 for a round-trip flight to Washington.

Meal reimbursements are set by the county auditor, who generally allows $38 a day on trips, $8 for breakfast, $10 for lunch and $20 for dinner. The amounts are higher for the high-cost areas of San Francisco, New York, Washington and Los Angeles County.

Board members, each elected from a district representing about 130,000 people, earn $47,877 a year. In addition, each receives an auto allowance of $500 a month or a leased automobile.

Veteran County Auditor-Controller Norman R. Hawkes said all supervisors draw from the same pool of expense money, “and I’ve never heard any discussions or concerns” about a supervisor overspending.

However, he emphasized that it is not his role to determine whether trips are of value to the county.

“I don’t think we’ve had a problem that’s a concern to me,” Hawkes said. “If the board sets their budget and they’re within it, then I’m not concerned.”

The supervisors overspent their $1.83-million budget last year by $42,200 because of unexpectedly high personnel expenses, according to a budget analyst in chief administrator Wittenberg’s office.

This story was reported by Tina Daunt, Daryl Kelley, Hugo Martin, Santiago O’Donnell and Psyche Pascual. It was written by Kelley.