Three days after DeKalb County raised property taxes to their highest level in recent history, five elected officials and two county employees took an all-expenses paid trip 2,600 miles away.
Taxpayers footed the $14,771 bill for the travel to the National Association of Counties legislative conference in Portland, Ore. No other metro Atlanta county sent nearly as large a contingent as DeKalb, if they sponsored a trip at all, prompting disgust from residents who see the issue as politically tone-deaf move.
“It sends a really poor message, like they can use our money for whatever they want,” said Patty Cobb, a paralegal from central DeKalb, who paid $200 more in taxes this year despite the value of her home dropping $15,000. “All the families I know have had to cut back. So why aren’t they?”
Records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed taxpayers covered the $5,421 that CEO Burrell Ellis and aide Nina Hall spent on the trip. Taxpayers ponied up another $9,350 for Commissioners Kathie Gannon, Larry Johnson, Lee May, Sharon Barnes Sutton and Sutton’s chief of staff, Judy Brownlee, to be there, too.
The trips lasted from July 15 to 19. On July 12, the county commission raised the tax rate 26 percent to plug a $37 million budget shortfall. The new 21.21 millage rate is the highest since at least 1992.
DeKalb officials, many of whom have leadership roles in NACO, said they attend the conference every year because it draws colleagues with a common set of problems and challenges from around the nation. Networking and planning there, they said, can help protect the county from further cuts in national aid and unfunded mandates.
“These aren’t junkets. They are substantive, real meetings,” Ellis said. “It saves taxpayers money at the end of the day.”
Other county leaders aren’t so sure. Fulton County sent four commissioners, at a total cost of about $8,300, but has not paid for more than those officials for the past three years.
Gwinnett County had sent its commission chairman to the convention regularly but hasn’t for the last two years. Chairman Charlotte Nash transferred her voting rights at this year’s meeting to the sole staffer who attended. The county paid about $2,300 for transportation director Jane Lemaster to make several presentations at the conference.
“We do see value in attending. The chairwoman made a conscious decision not to travel,” Gwinnett spokesman Joe Sorenson said. “In this day and age of budget cuts, financial considerations are always paramount.”
Those considerations are even more acute in Cobb County, which raised its millage rate 16 percent in July. Chairman Tim Lee said the county would pay for travel if needed but that officials find more value in using NACO for research needs.
There is also a question of appearances. Cobb’s commissioners went as far as to cancel in-state travel this year.
“We asked our departments to cut 10 percent, so we cut too,” Cobb Commissioner JoAnn Birrell said. “It just makes sense to cut back like everybody else.”
Cobb and DeKalb both cut back on travel costs in recent years, as budgets shrunk. Cobb cut the travel budget for its five commissioners 16 percent between 2009 and 2011.
The amount DeKalb commissioners spent on travel has plunged 43 percent in those two years, down to $27,900 spent through September of this year.
That total could be reduced even more if officials were more concerned with spending and the appearance of spending, said Michael Leo Owens, a professor of political science at Emory University.
No studies prove or disprove attending conferences truly benefit taxpayers and Owens believes officials would get just as much out of conferences if they viewed on a live-stream video or listened in on a conference call.
“There are ways to preserve and protect the public dime,” Owens said. “There are tremendous alternatives but the question is whether you want to pursue them.”
NACO has offered those alternatives, too. It has ramped up on webinars and online training in the past two years, knowing that counties nationwide are struggling with containing costs, said association spokesman Jim Philipps.
Conference attendance has plunged over that same period by almost 30 percent, down to 2,226 total registered county officials at the Oregon convention.
Without any studies on conference effectiveness, the arguments of whether to travel often become anecdotal. A DeKalb commissioner since 2002, Johnson, for instance, cites a prescription drug card program as one initiative he learned about at a previous conference.
The card, free for all residents in member counties, saves people up to 20 percent off prescription costs for drugs not covered by any other insurance.
“I am always looking to save money, but it’s an investment to be there,” Johnson said. “You have to make it.”
But that reasoning is a tougher sell with DeKalb and other counties in financial straits. It makes sense to Honey Van De Kreke, with one big caveat.
The owner of a Tucker sales firm, Van De Kreke supports at least some officials' travels, as long as they come back with proof of a return on investment. If a $2,000 trip nets even a $20,000 grant, it might be worth it, she said.
“I’m all about cost-saving measures for the county, but it’s not like they flew off to Tahiti,” said Van De Kreke, who lives in north DeKalb. “I just want the hard numbers now. Without the hard numbers of what your travel does for us, it’s a waste of money.”
No DeKalb official can provide that level of detail. Officials claim it’s impossible to prove that a meeting in July will result in a grant award the following year.
This helps explain why Cobb’s commissioners rarely make a case for travel and why DeKalb commissioner Jeff Rader said he skipped NACO this year. DeKalb Commissioner Elaine Boyer keeps it the most simple and no longer attends any conference outside of Georgia.
Tight budgets can always use extra cash. DeKalb recently spent about the same amount as its NACO trip on its share of a national grant to buy bulletproof vests for its police department. The $14,300 buys 28 vests for officers.
“It’s about prioritizing,” Boyer said. “I would really have liked to go to Portland and see their transit system up close. But that’s just not on my priority list when we have other clear needs.”
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