SACRAMENTO — A charity controlled by corporate interests paid more than $25,000 for an entourage of state aides to accompany Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on a trip to China, where he was honored at an event closely connected to first lady Maria Shriver's family.
The governor's office billed the California State Protocol Foundation -- a nonprofit organization whose declared mission is to shoulder expenses that would normally fall on state taxpayers -- for airfare, hotel rooms, meals and transportation for five staffers to attend the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai in October, according to state officials and records.
Schwarzenegger, who accepted an award from the Special Olympics while in China for his work in raising the group's worldwide profile, paid for his own travel by private jet.
The trip for the governor's aides is the most recent funded by the Protocol Foundation, a charity affiliated with California business leaders that has spent $1.7 million for Schwarzenegger and his staff to travel luxuriously on international voyages described as trade missions.
Nonprofit watchdogs have criticized the charity for refusing to reveal the names of companies and individuals who paid for the governor's trips and in turn receive tax breaks. Federal law does not require such charities to disclose the names of their donors.
For Schwarzenegger, the Special Olympics has been a highly personal cause for nearly three decades. The group was founded in 1968 by his mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and helps the mentally disabled take part in athletics. Maria Shriver is an unpaid board member. The governor's brother-in-law, Timothy Shriver, has served as the Special Olympics chairman, president and chief executive.
Charities, including the Protocol Foundation, are supposed to spend the money they raise in accordance with their mission.
Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy in Chicago, said that while Special Olympics may be worthy of support, sending state employees to accompany Schwarzenegger at an athletic event in China doesn't appear to benefit California taxpayers. More likely, the trip helps the donors achieve their true mission, he said: to curry favor with the governor.
But "charities do not exist to further special interests, or the interests of specific politicians," Borochoff said.
