
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 12, 1995                   TAG: 9503140070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

DENVER AIRPORT REVENUE BEING REVIEWED FOR MISUSE

The Transportation Department's inspector general is conducting an inquiry of special sensitivity for the agency's secretary, Federico Pena: Investigators are eyeing whether officials in Denver, where Pena was mayor for eight years, improperly diverted revenue from the city's federally subsidized airport to pay for other civic services.

Interviews and public records show that the expenditures being reviewed include city payments to Ron Brown, the current commerce secretary who in the late 1980s and early 1990s was then-Mayor Pena's handpicked lobbyist in Washington.

Brown and his company - Patton, Boggs & Blow - were paid $240,000 during 1991-92 from airport funds, according to records provided last month to the inspector general by city auditors in Denver. Copies of the records were obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

``They asked for several documents that went back into the middle of Pena's (mayoral) administration,'' said a Denver auditing official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

This official and others familiar with aspects of the inspector general's inquiry said millions of dollars in spending for legal services and lobbying under Pena's successor as mayor, Wellington Webb, also are under review.

The federal government provided funding during the 1980s and 1990s for Denver's Stapleton International Airport. It also helped pay for the new $4.9 billion airport complex, Denver International Airport, which opened Feb. 28 to replace Stapleton.

Denver's contract with Brown's company was for general-purpose lobbying for the city ``under the directive of the mayor.''

by CNB