D. A. Looks at Airport’s Use of Funds : Burbank: Court order requires that commissioners’ 1992-95 expense reports be surrendered within three weeks.

BURBANK —  The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Tuesday that it is looking into allegations that Burbank Airport officials misused public funds, nearly a year after a Burbank City Council member protested the airport commission’s policy of providing first-class air travel and other free perks to commissioners’ spouses.

Airport spokesman Victor Gill acknowledged that the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, a board of nine commissioners appointed by the three city governments, was served with a subpoena Thursday.

The court order, he said, requires that the commissioners’ 1992-95 expense reports be turned over to the district attorney’s office within three weeks. Gill said the airport will comply.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Efrem M. Grail, who is handling the case, declined to discuss any aspect of the subpoena.

Neither Gill nor Grail would say whether the probe is tied to a two-page complaint Councilman Ted McConkey lodged last August with the district attorney’s office before he was elected to office.

But a spokeswoman for Grail’s office, Sandi Gibbons, said allegations related to “misuse of public funds” are “under review”--a preliminary step in which prosecutors try to determine if a crime has been committed and an investigation should be launched. There was no indication of how long the review would take.

McConkey’s complaint alleged that airport commissioners illegally and routinely used taxpayers’ money to pay for their spouses’ airline tickets, hotel rooms, food and other incidental expenses while accompanying them to conferences nationwide.

A retired aerospace worker, McConkey was elected to the Burbank City Council in April. Since taking office in May, he and Bob Kramer, a newspaper columnist and painting contractor, have led efforts to control municipal government spending and increase accountability by officials, such as airport commissioners.

“California’s Constitution prohibits gifts of public funds to individuals,” McConkey said Tuesday. “Taking public money and giving it away, they just can’t do it. Once it comes into the possession of the Airport Authority, it’s public funds . . . Every dime that comes into the airport is public money and has to be accounted for.”

Since 1978, the commission has had a policy of reimbursing commissioners and their spouses for first-class air travel and virtually all other expenses incurred to attend an annual conference for airport operators nationwide, as well as other business-related events.

The five- to six-day conference, sponsored by the Airport Council International, was held in Toronto last year and has recently been held in places like Nashville, Maui, New Orleans and Seattle.

Gill stressed that not all commissioners choose to fly first-class or bring their spouses.

Last year, he said, all three of Burbank’s commissioners and two Glendale commissioners opted to fly coach and pay for their spouses’ expenses. Some, he added, upgraded to first-class seating by using their own frequent-flyer miles.

But public records indicate that even the commissioners’ cheapest airline tickets can be expensive.

In 1992, former board president Brian Bowman of Burbank and his wife, Linda, spent $1,922 on two round-trip coach tickets to Maui for the conference and another $1,282 during a five-day stay at a Hyatt Regency hotel.

The following year, then-Commissioner George Battey Jr. of Burbank spent $3,555 on air fare alone to Nashville. Battey could not be reached for comment and records obtained by The Times Tuesday did not show whether he was accompanied by his wife or whether he traveled coach or first-class.

Also in 1993, the authority spent $6,325 on registration fees for the commissioners, their spouses and other airport officials attending the conference in Nashville. At least five wives were signed up at a cost of $100 each.

The authority’s interim president, Carl W. Raggio Jr. of Glendale, contends the airport’s policy of reimbursing commissioners and their spouses for travel does not come at the expense of taxpayers.

He said it is funded with money the airport generates on its own from airline landing, passenger and storage fees.

“No taxpayer pays for [the commissioners’ and their spouses’] air travel,” Raggio said. “Not Burbank, not Glendale, not Pasadena, not the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]. I don’t believe we’ve abused it, frankly.

“You, as a commissioner, have the obligation to be on top of every safety concern there is. The only way to get that is by going to classrooms. These,” he said, referring to the conferences, “are our classrooms once a year.”

Bowman, who resigned from the Airport Authority in May because of conflicts with McConkey and other Burbank council members, agreed.

“I don’t think it’s a real problem,” he said. “I think it’s good that spouses go on certain trips.

“The airport commissioners have to go by their own judgment, that’s their call as long as it was a legitimate expense. The time airport commissioners are giving to airport issues is discretionary time, time that would normally be spent with their spouses.”

Times correspondent Steve Ryfle contributed to this story.