Another day, another trip

Another day, another trip

Yesterday in this space, we railed against federal officials who took trips to Hong Kong, Spain, New York City, San Francisco and New Orleans with the tab being picked up by toy and furniture makers and fireworks lobbyists. Better we said, that the government should pay for trips taken by the chairman of the Consumer Products Safety Commission.

Today, we rise again to rail, this time about officials who went to one of those same cities, New Orleans, and today’s complaint is that government (in this case city government) paid the bill.

Are we opening ourselves to a charge of being inconsistent? Not at all.

Tuesday’s editorial centered on the impropriety of government officials accepting transportation, lodging and food from manufacturers of products that those government officials were supposed to monitor for safety. We were not convinced that the head of the CPSC had to accept expensive trips so as to get a jump on what toys were coming to market or to get a sense of whether fireworks were safe.

If the trips were necessary, we said, government should have paid.

Necessary is the key word as we discuss today’s topic, a trip to New Orleans by five lameduck Youngstown city councilmen.

There is no necessity for five councilmen who will be leaving office 45 days after arriving home from their $12,000 trip to attend the National League of Cities’ conference.

A horrible investment

What will Artis Gillam Sr., D-1st; Rufus Hudson, D-2nd; Richard Atkinson, R-3rd; Paul D. Pancoe, D-6th, and Mark Memmer, D-7th, do over their six remaining weeks in office that will provide Youngstown residents with any reasonable return on the city’s investment?

The rationales given by various members of the New Orleans gang would be laughable if the city had money to burn. Since it doesn’t, the excuses become pathetic.

Some pointed out that they were elected to serve until midnight Dec. 31, 2007, and that’s exactly what they intend to do. Which is as it should be, since they will receive their council pay right through the last day of their terms. If they take their service so seriously, perhaps it would have been best if they were earning that pay on Phelps Street this week, rather than Bourbon Street.

Some apparently intend to devote part of a day to working on Habitat for Humanity houses for victims of Hurricane Katrina. How noble, how inspiring, how bogus. It is not difficult to find weekend work on a Habitat house in Youngstown. And for those who really want to contribute to rebuilding New Orleans, dozens of groups, many of them church-related, continue to put together organized working trips. Of course, workers are expected to put in more than a day, the taxpayers won’t be footing the tab and the accommodations, food and day trips won’t be what is to be found at a National League of Cities conference. Church groups don’t tend to take breaks for the Sunset on the River Jazz Dinner Cruise, the Mississippi River Plantation Tour, Brunch at Brennan’s or carriage tours of the French Quarter.

Expanding horizons

To be sure, there is a lot of work to be done at the conference for those who are inclined. It is billed as a professional development opportunity offering a unique mix of general sessions, conference workshops and networking sessions aimed at providing the insight and tools needed to solve municipal problems. It sounds like a great place for a councilman entering his or her first or second term of office.

It’s a little late for these five, all of whom are — figuratively speaking, of course — the lamest of ducks. And mixing in another animal metaphor, Gillam, Hudson, Atkinson, Pancoe and Memmer can polish this pig of a trip as much as they want, but it’s no less piggish.

And the shame of it is that not one of these outgoing councilmen could resist one last free trip, not one could think of a better way to spend a couple of thousand dollars in his ward, and not one had what it takes to stand up and say, “Guys, this is wrong; this is not what we were elected to do.”

What a sad commentary on the city and on its elected officials — those who took the trip and all the others who through their silence aided and abetted this assault on the city coffers.