http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-nunez5oct05,0,2294927.story?coll=la-home-center
From the Los Angeles Times
Nuñez travels the world like a high-roller
The leader of the Assembly spends tens of thousands of dollars in campaign
funds but
refuses to provide details on his trips. He says the trips are 'not only
justified
but necessary.' By Nancy Vogel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 5, 2007
SACRAMENTO -- As leader of the California Assembly, Speaker Fabian Nuñez
has traveled
the world in luxury, paying with campaign funds for visits to some of the
finest
hotels and restaurants and for purchases at high-end retailers such as
Louis Vuitton
in Paris.
It is not clear how these activities have related to legislative business,
as state
law requires, because the Los Angeles Democrat refuses to provide details
on tens of
thousands of dollars in such expenditures.
The spending, listed in mandatory filings with the state, includes $47,412
on United,
Lufthansa and Air France airlines this year; $8,745 at the exclusive Hotel
Arts in
Barcelona, Spain; $5,149 for a "meeting" at Cave L'Avant Garde, a wine
seller in the
Bordeaux region of France; a total of $2,562 for two "office expenses" at
Vuitton,
two years apart; and $1,795 for a "meeting" at Le Grand Colbert, a
venerable Parisian
restaurant.
Nuñez also spent $2,934 at Colosseum Travel in Rome, and paid $505 to the
European
airline Spanair.
Other expenses are closer to home: a $1,715 meeting at Asia de Cuba
restaurant in
West Hollywood; a $317 purchase at upscale Pavilion Salon Shoes in
Sacramento; a
$2,428 meeting at 58 Degrees and Holding, a Sacramento wine bar and
bistro; and $800
spent at Dollar Rent a Car in Kihei, Hawaii.
Asked in an interview about his foreign travel in general, Nuñez said:
"For me, it's
a question of: Is my perspective on issues broad enough? Do I have enough
context
when I make decisions? This is a big state to run. You've got to know what
you're
doing.
"These trips," he said, "at least the ones I've taken -- I feel very
confident and
comfortable that they're not only justified but necessary for the
decisions I need to
make on a daily basis."
Given a list of 99 entries culled from his campaign finance filings,
however, Nuñez's
staff refused to show how the expenditures were related to California
government or
politics. Spokeswoman Beth Willon would say only that the expenditures
were "properly
disclosed and described as required by law."
California law requires all campaign fund expenditures to be at least
"reasonably"
related to a political, legislative or governmental purpose. Expenditures
that confer
a substantial personal benefit must be "directly" related to such
purposes.
Some of Nuñez's travel in his more than three years as speaker has
involved studying
high-speed rail and preschool programs in France, studying renewable
energy in
Germany and Denmark, and visiting South America with other lawmakers and
lobbyists to
study global warming solutions.
Some activity, however, including the 2006 Barcelona visit and a $3,199
stay at Hotel
Parco in Rome this year, does not appear tied to any policy-related trips
announced
by Nuñez's office.
In the interview, Nuñez said he wouldn't need to use his $5.3-million
"Friends of
Fabian Nuñez" campaign account to offset travel costs if he were
independently
wealthy. The speaker's job pays $130,062 a year plus a tax-free $170 for
expenses
each day the Assembly is in session.
"There's not too big a difference," he said, "between how I live and how
most
middle-class people live."
Politicians are required to periodically disclose to the secretary of
state's office
contributions to and expenditures from their campaign accounts. Expenses
are re****ted
under 27 categories, such as "campaign consultants," "fundraising events"
and
"candidate travel, lodging and meals." The re****ting forms also allow
entries to be
described in greater detail.
Doug Heller of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa
Monica called
on Nuñez to explain his spending.
"How much political, legislative and governmental work does Fabian Nuñez
have to do
in Barcelona?" Heller said. "If they're legitimate [expenditures], you've
got to
explain it."
A popular politician from a heavily Democratic district, Nuñez ran
unopposed in his
last election but, as speaker, is responsible for helping fund and manage
other
Democratic Assembly campaigns.
He received a total of $1.9 million in 2005 and 2006 from unions,
cor****ations and
others with a perennial stake in legislative business. They include
$17,300 from AT&T
and Verizon, phone companies that pushed Nuñez legislation allowing them
to compete
against cable television companies, and $2,500 from a group of
pharmaceutical
companies affected by a Nuñez bill to create a prescription drug discount
program.
The State Building and Construction Trades Council of California donated
$5,000 in
February 2006, one day before a bill it sponsored was introduced in the
Assembly.The
state Democratic Party, which unlike officeholders can raise unlimited
sums,
transferred $4 million to Nuñez's campaign account last November.
Nuñez occasionally looks beyond his campaign account to pay for travel. In
2006, he
re****ted accepting $12,500 in airfare, meals and lodging from the
tax-exempt
California Foundation on the Environment and Economy, whose donors include
utilities
and oil companies with business before the Legislature.
The group helped pay for Nuñez and his wife, a nurse and consultant, to
travel in
Brazil, Argentina and Chile, where they and other lawmakers, lobbyists and
the
governor's chief of staff studied technologies to reduce global warming.
Similarly, the tax-exempt William C. Velasquez Institute, a policy think
tank focused
on Latino issues, paid $6,169 toward Nuñez's 2005 trip to France and
Sweden to study
universal preschool. The institute also helped finance Nuñez's trip to
France in
April to study high-speed rail, according to institute President Antonio
Gonzalez.
Nuñez, a former union organizer, travels and dines much more comfortably
with
campaign funds than he could on the taxpayers' dime. The state limits
employees to $6
for breakfast, $10 for lunch and $18 for dinner when they are traveling on
business
in California. Hotel reimbursement ranges from $84 to $140 per night plus
tax,
depending upon location.
Luxurious living is incompatible with Nuñez's image as a champion of
working people,
Heller said: "Here's a guy who gives a lot of lip service to speaking for
the little
guy, but he's living like a Goliath."
And "when his campaigns are funding it, you have to wonder: Who does he
owe for this
lifestyle?" Heller said. "That's the problem."
The campaign filings of Nuñez's legislative counterpart, Senate President
Pro Tem Don
Perata (D-Oakland), show no overseas travel over the last three years and
few
"meetings" costing more than a few hundred dollars.
Much of the spending from the "Taxpayers for Perata" fund are described as
gifts for
colleagues or constituents, including a $490 "gift for staff member" at
the Claremont
Resort and Spa in Berkeley.
Perata also re****ts spending $3,249 at an Apple store for "holiday gifts
for
colleagues," $799 at Montclair Village Wine shop for an office "election
party" and
$2,665 for a staff party at À Côté Restaurant in Oakland.
For decades in California, lawmakers were permitted to use campaign funds
for
personal benefit, said Robert Stern, president of the nonprofit Center for
Governmental Studies in Los Angeles and former general counsel for the
Fair Political
Practices Commission.
They could, for example, buy a car with political donations and pocket any
remaining
contributions when they left office. The Legislature, under pressure from
the Fair
Political Practices Commission, passed laws in 1982 barring those
practices and
further restricting the use of campaign funds, Stern said.
The commission is responsible for enforcing those laws and is assisted by
the
Franchise Tax Board, which audits 30 randomly chosen lawmakers every two
years. Nuñez
is among those being audited this year, and a re****t is due by February.
The commission has taken action against fewer than a dozen politicians for
misuse of
campaign funds. Among them is Charles Calderon, a Montebello Democrat who
served in
the Assembly in the 1980s, the Senate in the 1990s and is now in his
second Assembly
stint.
Calderon has been fined by the Fair Political Practices Commission a total
of $33,000
for numerous violations, including using campaign funds to pay for a Lake
Tahoe
family vacation, limousine rental, clothes for his wife, modeling
photographs, a
costumed entertainer and a tennis outfit.
nancy.vogel@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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