Traveling Aldermen Coast Past Ethics Rules

While Mayor Rahm Emanuel prepares to unveil his 2012 city budget next month, Ald. Daniel Solis (25th Ward) will be bicycling in the Netherlands. But Solis won’t be on a European vacation: He will be peddling amid the canals of Amsterdam on a study trip paid for by a bicycling advocacy group.

Solis revealed the trip on Twitter and said he will report the $2,000 gift on his aldermanic website, but nothing in the city’s municipal code requires him to disclose the free travel. The travel disclosure rules that apply to Chicago’s elected officials are far more lenient than the ethics laws for state and federal leaders, as well as for the politicians in other major U.S. cities.

The city’s ethics ordinance does not consider work-related trips to be gifts, though it does require elected Chicago officials and some city employees to report gifts worth more than $500 in annual financial disclosure statement. The gift restrictions do not cover “reasonable hosting, including travel and expenses, entertainment, meals or refreshments furnished in connection with public events, appearances or ceremonies related to official city business, if furnished by the sponsor of such public event,” the ordinance states.

Emanuel’s push to reform City Hall and make it more transparent to the public has not touched on the issue of greater disclosure of privately funded trips. Tarrah Cooper, a spokeswoman for Emanuel, this week referred questions to Steve Berlin, the executive director of the city’s Board of Ethics.

Berlin said in an email to the Chicago News Cooperative this week that the ordinance “has long been interpreted by the board” to allow business travel paid for by non-profit organizations. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley took dozens of trips during his final years in office, many financed by groups including World Business Chicago, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and the bid committee for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

“Anything beyond reasonable travel–i.e. anything beyond what’s necessary to accomplish the business purpose of a trip–would be considered a gift,” Berlin said. “Such ‘gifts’ might include golf greens’ fees or entertainment that’s not part of the public event.”

Berlin issued two advisory opinions in 2007 to unnamed aldermen who asked the ethics board about the propriety of accepting free overseas trips. In the case of an alderman who went on trips to Israel and China, Berlin replied that “cultural and educational trips” are not forbidden so long as the travel is not paid for by “an anonymous donor or based on a mutual understanding that the recipients’ City judgments or decisions would be influenced thereby.”

In another case, an unidentified alderman asked whether it was permitted to accept travel expenses from the American Israel Education Foundation for a trip that would include “at least one other Chicago alderman,” according to board records. Berlin wrote that disclsoure to the ethics board was only necessary if the alderman received an honorarium in addition to free travel and accommodations.

Solis said the rules regarding trips are so confusing that he routinely consults the city’s Board of Ethics, which enforces the disclosure rules.

“I always check, even if it appears to be a clear-cut issue,” Solis said.

Many elected leaders beyond City Hall face far stricter regulations requiring them to detail free travel that they accept.

In New York City, all elected and high-ranking officials are required to report trips worth more than $1,000 to the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board if they are paid by a non-governmental entity. Wayne Hawley, a deputy executive director with the board, said he is not surprised Chicago is behind New York on public disclosures.

“This stuff is a hodgepodge around the country,” Hawley said. “Frankly, it’s mainly a function of what happened to get into the public’s craw at one point or another. It’s often because somebody just seemed to take some trips that just stretched everybody’s credulity, both in terms of how much they were out of town or who was paying for it or where they seem to be going on our time.”

In California, politicians have to explain how out-of-state traveling expenses paid through campaign funds are tied to government business.

Members of Congress must publicly disclose trips and the cost as well as any paid trips by staff members. While a congressman, Emanuel reported taking nine all-expenses-paid trips, including two visits to Los Angeles for appearances on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

Under the Illinois ethics act, traveling expenses are considered to be an “honorarium,” and state officials and employees must report any gifts and honoraria worth more than $500 on their statements of economic interest. Those statements can be found on Secretary of State Jesse White’s website.

When he was a member of the state House of Representatives in 2010, Ald. Will Burns (4th) reported three trips: one to Baltimore, paid by the Pew Charitable Trusts; another to Israel as a guest of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; and a trip to France paid for by the U.S. State Department.

“What you don’t want is the perception of corruption,” Burns said. “You can’t do things in secret. It’s an honor and a privilege to serve the public, and the public is entitled to know who pays for you to go on trips.”

When Daley was mayor, although his office disclosed who had paid for his trips, the administration declined to provide a detailed accounting of the expenses incurred on those travels, saying it would be too much work to tally up the costs. The Chicago News Cooperative reported in December 2009 that Daley had visited Abu Dhabi on a trip organized by World Business Chicago earlier that year, shortly before the Persian Gulf emirate became a major investor in the privatization of Chicago’s parking meters.

Solis said the advocacy group Bikes Belong, based in Boulder, Colo., will pay for his trip to the Netherlands, and he said activists have not asked him to vote a certain way on any piece of legislation. He said the trip, which takes place at a time when the expansion of bike lanes is becoming a focus of political discussion, would be purely educational, providing him with an opportunity to learn ways to make the city more bike-friendly.

“My expectation is that we’re going to learn their strategies and their practices that they have implemented in Amsterdam specifically and make bike riding more popular and easier to happen across the city,” Solis said.

Bruno Maier, vice president of Bikes Belong, said the group pays for trips for officials from across the country.

“None of this stuff is confidential,” Maier said in a telephone interview. “For us, we’re not telling them, ‘Go back and implement X amount of bike trails.’”

Bikes Belong paid for two other City Council members, Proco “Joe” Moreno (1st) and Rey Colon (35th), to go to Spain in March for a conference on bicycling. Colon last month gave a presentation on the trip to the council’s Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee during a hearing to discuss how to make the city more bike-friendly.

Although Moreno said he planned on disclosing his trip in a letter to the Board of Ethics, he added that he was concerned aldermen and other city officials would shy away from taking educational trips if they were required to report them.

Moreno said he considered it necessary for aldermen to make such trips because it is easier to generate ideas after seeing first-hand how other cities handle similar problems.

“Yes, we have the Internet, but it’s a different experience to go there and see it,” he said.