Travel Expenses

Several Los Angeles City Housing Authority Board members said Thursday they would welcome an audit by Controller Wendy Greuel of their travel expenses. The move comes after a CBS-TV Channel 2 report last month that board members spent more than $150,000 over the last two years on extravagant hotels and restaurants, and sometimes double dipped, accepting per diems for expenses while also paying for meals with agency credit cards. Agency staff has asked several board members to reimburse hundreds of dollars for such double-dipping charges.

Former U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien stayed at pricey hotels while traveling on business and then sought to justify reimbursement by telling his secretary to falsely state that more affordable rooms were not available, an audit made public this week alleges. O'Brien was one of five U.S. attorneys whose travel expenses were singled out in the report by the Department of Justice's inspector general. The report found that some of O'Brien's claims for reimbursement were "inappropriate and egregious violations" of the travel policies that govern federal prosecutors.

Top administrators in Vernon, already among the highest-paid local officials in the state, racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in city-paid expenses on first-class flights, luxury hotels like the Ritz Carlton and limousine service, records reviewed by The Times show. The records, which cover 2005-2010, detail lavish travel expenses billed to the city by its top executives, including then-city administrators Donal O'Callaghan and Eric T. Fresch. Some of the trips occurred as recently as this year, when the city laid off employees and canceled the life and health insurance benefits of city workers' spouses and children because of budget problems.

Anyone who has recently traveled to a major U.S. city knows the shock of finding a hotel, car rental or restaurant bill laden with extra charges. It's a growing trend among cities to add bed taxes, airport concession taxes and other charges to visitors' bills in order to fund tourism marketing campaigns, airport improvements and other projects. Combined with sales taxes, the extra travel taxes add about $28 a day to the cost of a visitor's lodging, car rentals and meals in the nation's top 50 destination cities, according to a new study by the education and research arm of the National Business Travel Assn.

Tough economic times may make it tough to donate to worthy causes like helping to clean up the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, much less finance a nice summer vacation. But if you're willing to combine the two you might be able to have fun and support charities at the same time. Just ask Rob Seltzer, a Beverly Hills accountant, who writes off a weeklong bike trip from Burlington, Vt., to Portland, Maine, on his tax return each year. Cheating? Not at all. The ride is sponsored by a group called Charity Treks, which encourages avid cyclists like Seltzer and his wife to find sponsors who will write checks for AIDS research.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers received more than $929,000 in gifts last year, including overseas trips, boxes of cigars, bottles of wine, clothes and tickets to sporting events and concerts. Many of the gifts came from groups lobbying state government. The largesse, shown in filings required by state law, dismayed government watchdog groups and even some state legislators who are advocating a $10 monthly limit on gifts from corporations and other interests that hire lobbyists to influence government officials.

Tony Seminary never expected to experience Pasadena in January after enduring Boise in September. Yet there the Oregon football fan was Friday afternoon at the Rose Bowl, a T-shirt with quarterback Jeremiah Masoli's No. 8 on his back and a plastic duck call draped from his neck. "To be here today from that," Seminary said, referring to the Ducks' 19-8 loss to Boise State in their season opener, "I would have never guessed." Seminary was so disgusted with the Ducks' listless play against the Broncos -- not to mention the infamous postgame punch by running back LeGarrette Blount -- that he e-mailed Oregon Coach Chip Kelly and jokingly attached an invoice for his travel expenses.

A former high-ranking California State University official collected more than $150,000 in improper expense reimbursements, including claims for unnecessary trips to Amsterdam and Shanghai, meals that exceeded allowable amounts and travel between his Northern California home and the university's Long Beach headquarters, a state audit has found. The audit, released Thursday, scolds the university for a lack of oversight in approving the expenses, saying they were "unnecessary and not in the best interest of the university or the state."

The long-running torment of the commercial real estate industry dragged on in the third quarter, but the world's largest brokerage of office buildings, warehouses and other business properties managed to eke out a small profit. CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. reported net income of $12.4 million, or 4 cents a share, after spending the first two quarters of the year in the red. However, profit was down 69% from $40.4 million, or 15 cents a share, in the same period last year. The Los Angeles company posted adjusted earnings of 8 cents a share after deducting one-time charges mostly related to cost-cutting measures.

It has been uttered countless times by angry fans disappointed about their team's performance: I should get my money back. Tony Seminary, Oregon fan and alumnus, actually did. After Oregon's season-opening 19-8 loss at Boise State, Seminary wrote Oregon Coach Chip Kelly an e-mail, saying, "The product on the field Thursday night is not something I was at all proud of, and I feel as though I'm entitled to my money back for the trip."...