THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 23, 1994 TAG: 9411230002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf is due back today from a ``trade mission'' to China and Hong Kong. What a market. What a trip.
Who paid? Not the city.
Mayor Oberndorf's husband has told us the mayor visited Hong Kong and six Chinese cities at their invitation and at the suggestion of Duncan Leung of Citiview International Ltd. Citiview, a local business seeking to expand China-U.S. trade, has an option on 21 acres in Oceana West Industrial Park in Virginia Beach. The mayor's trip, Mr. Oberndorf said, would signal the city's seriousness about trade with the Far East.
But who paid? Not the mayor.
Citiview paid: It paid the way of the mayor, of her daughter and of Jerry Stewart, assistant business development manager in the city's Economic Development Department.
That is not a violation of state and local law, the city attorney and the commonwealth's attorney agreed in an opinion the mayor requested several weeks before the trip. Citiview's option is a done deal with Virginia Beach's Development Authority, an independent city agency. No business regarding Citiview's option or its proposed use of the property is pending before City Council.
The two attorneys also added a disclaimer, customary but pertinent: The arrangement might not look too swell.
Legal, yes; swell, no - and apparently not business as usual for the city's Economic Development Department or for other members of City Council. The city's public information office wasn't informed of Citiview's sponsorship before the trip to China. Nor were all council members officially notified.
Why not? Who pays for city officials' official trips is a natural concern, particularly so when times are frugal and trips aren't cheap. If there's nothing wrong with the mayor et al. accepting trips abroad from a private business, then there's nothing wrong with making that acceptance and that business known to city staff, City Council and the public.
And there's everything right with making it known at the time a trip is announced and taken, not on a once-a-year disclosure form, which is all that conflict-of-interest law requires.
The conflict law changes frequently. It will change Jan. 1, when a provision kicks in tying the timing and nature of gifts to public officials to reasonable doubt about their impartiality. That provision could prove as vague and bypassable as other sections of the conflict-of-interest law.
Meantime, council can decide its policy. Should any official trips paid for by private companies looking to locate in the city be OK? Or do they take privatization a step beyond propriety? Is a trip really necessary if public officials risk criticism either for legally wasting public funds or for legally accepting a gift? City Council needs to ask, and answer.
And, meantime, if city officials can go to China, City Council can go this extra mile, fast: Require public disclosure, full and upfront, of who pays whenever, wherever city officials travel. by CNB