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Wednesday, March 26, 1997

Budget bills would curtail Human Rights Commission travel

By PEGGY FIKAC

Associated Press Writer

AUSTIN (AP) - Out-of-state travel by Texas Human Rights Commission officials and staff would be curtailed under budget proposals prompted by state-paid trips to extravagant locales.

The travel was reported by The Associated Press in January after a review of Human Rights Commission records for fiscal year 1996.

"I don't believe it would have even been a point of contention if it had only been one place, but it was numerous places, resort-type settings," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, said Tuesday.

Many of the trips were made by Executive Director Bill Hale and others in connection with Hale's post as president of the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies. He says his position gives Texas greater influence on federal policy and funding decisions.

Among Hale's destinations were San Francisco, Hilton Head, S.C., Canada and Monterrey, Mexico, for conferences; to Miami Beach for conference planning; and to New York to give a workshop. Not including trips to Washington, Hale's tab alone for 10 out-of-state trips totaled about $8,700.

The Finance Committee on Tuesday endorsed a budget amendment by Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, to restrict state-paid costs for out-of-state trips by people in the agency to $3,000 annually in the upcoming two-year budget period.

The House version of the budget has a stricter provision. It would limit out-of-state travel costs by commission employees or commissioners to $1,500 each per year.

Barrientos said he is not concerned about the propriety of the travel, calling those at the agency "good people" and the amount spent on travel "a pittance compared to what other agencies spend." But he said he wanted to ward off criticism.

"I want to keep it so squeaky clean nobody will even raise a thought of anything wrong there. I just wanted to make sure that no one had the slightest notion that this agency was abusing our tax dollars," Barrientos said.

Hale, whose term as IAOHRA president ends this year, said he wouldn't have any trouble meeting the $3,000 limit.

"We worked together on that, but that's as far as I'm going to comment," he said.

On the House side, Appropriations Committee Chairman Rob Junell, D-San Angelo, also voiced concerns about the trips. He said the fact that the commission spends less on travel than many other agencies is beside the point.

"That's a great excuse, isn't it?" Junell said, calling it the "everybody else is doing it" excuse. "I mean, you know ... 'I only killed 10 people, and they killed 20.' "

According to records at the Commission on Human Rights, the state paid for more than $9,000 for 12 in- or out-of-state trips by Hale that were related to IAOHRA for fiscal year 1996, which ended Aug. 31.

IAOHRA-related travel by other staff members or commissioners, plus travel costs for out-of-state people to participate in an IAOHRA conference in Fort Worth, amounted to nearly another $10,000, according to travel records and figures from Hale.

The $19,000 was nearly 19 percent of all agency travel expenditures.

Besides the IAOHRA travel, records show the Texas agency paid a total of more than $2,000 for out-of-state trips by Hale to New York, where he stayed in a $280-per-night hotel, Indiana and Nashville, Tenn.

Total travel made up less than 4 percent of the agency's $2.1 million budget in 1996, Hale said. Its travel expenditures were $102,015, or 4.8 percent of the total budget, Hale said, but reimbursements from various sources brought that to $81,976, or 3.8 percent.

The state wasn't reimbursed for travel expenses related to the international human rights group, he said. Send a Letter to the Editor about This Story | Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
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