Bradley's Foreign Travels Top All Big-City Mayors : Trips: But top City Hall aide says the mayor's overseas visits have helped make L.A. a major trade center.

By GLENN F. BUNTING

Sept. 30, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Mayor Tom Bradley, back from Monaco after a 17-day tour of Western Europe, has traveled abroad at public expense more often in recent years than any mayor in the nation’s 10 most populous cities, The Times has found.

Bradley will take to the skies again on Oct. 20, when he is scheduled to lead a delegation to Leningrad to welcome Los Angeles’ newest sister city, said a spokesman for the mayor.

The weeklong trip to the Soviet Union, city records show, will mark the 15th time that Bradley has ventured overseas since January, 1987.

During the last eight years, records show, the mayor has been away from the city a total of 690 days--twice the number that his predecessor, Sam Yorty, logged in his first two terms when Bradley began to criticize his travel.

Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani defended Bradley’s travels, saying that his efforts overseas have helped build Los Angeles into a major foreign trade center.

“It’s easy to write about (the mayor visiting) exotic cities that most people have never been to,” Fabiani said in an interview. “But when you see the positive impact on our economy, the trips are well worth it.”

A survey of other big-city mayors found that only Annette Strauss of Dallas travels as often as Bradley. Strauss has made 15 foreign trips on city business since 1987--but unlike Bradley, none of her travel expenses are paid with public funds, she said.

Mayors in the nation’s five largest cities excluding Los Angeles--New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston and San Diego--took a combined total of 14 foreign trips over the last four years. Six of the trips were taken by Houston Mayor Kathy Whitmire.

Bradley, who returned from Europe on Thursday, declined to be interviewed about his travels. His most recent journey included visits to England, France, Italy and West Germany to pitch Los Angeles as a popular tourist destination. The mayor was scheduled to spend the last five days in Monaco at an airport conference, but cut his stay there two days short because there was no remaining business on his schedule, said spokesman Bill Chandler.

Other big-city leaders lag far behind Bradley, according to an informal survey of travel by mayors in the 10 largest U.S. cities.

Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode has not taken any foreign trips since 1987, according to his staff. Goode considers each travel request and “if it is not directly related to some important city action or city responsibility, he doesn’t go,” said press secretary Karen Waddington.

Detroit Mayor Coleman Young has taken only one foreign trip since 1987, said Robert Berg, the mayor’s press secretary.

“Various invitations come through but generally there is enough happening here at any given time that he is just reluctant to get away for too long a period of time,” Berg said.

Strauss said all of her foreign trips are designed to “let the world know the opportunities of Dallas and the advantages of doing business in Dallas.” Her expenses, Strauss said, are paid out of a private fund established to finance overseas travel by city officials to promote Dallas.

Bradley’s travel expenses are paid primarily from four accounts--his mayoral budget, political campaign funds and the city’s harbor and airport departments. The bulk of his travel costs come out of harbor and airport funds that cannot be used for general city services. City officials were unable to provide a figure for the cost of all of Bradley’s travels.

Bradley raised the travel issue in 1969 when he first ran against then-incumbent Yorty. Yorty “clearly doesn’t display a desire to be mayor of this city,” Bradley told a City Hall news conference. “You can see this in the frequency of his departures from the city.”

City records show that Bradley has been away from the city on 690 dates since September, 1982. He had criticized Yorty for being absent from the city a total of 328 dates during an eight-year period ending in 1969. Despite the criticism from Bradley, Yorty was absent 372 days during the first 43 months of his third and final term.

The attendance numbers for Bradley and Yorty include time spent outside the city campaigning for higher office.

It made no difference, Bradley said in 1969, whether Yorty called his trips trade missions or junkets. Yorty’s absentee record and “his lack of full-time leadership is one reason why this city is in trouble today,” Bradley said.

Running Los Angeles today, however, requires devoting more attention to foreign interests than 15 years ago, Fabiani said.

“Clearly, as the city’s role as an international trading center has grown, it has become necessary for the mayor to represent the city in negotiations abroad with major foreign trading companies. That was not something that Sam Yorty was doing in the ‘60s. But it is something that has paid off for the mayor and the city a hundredfold with the Olympics, with a strong local economy that has been remarkably resistant to recession, and with enormously large and bustling airport and harbor facilities,” he said.

In an interview last week, Yorty scoffed at the frequency of Bradley’s travels.

“I was trying to make Los Angeles an international city and I did,” Yorty said. “He is just having a good time at city expense.”

The mayor’s out-of-town travel became a subject of political debate during last year’s election.

Before Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky dropped out of the mayor’s race, he said that Bradley had devoted too much time “jet-setting around the globe” while Los Angeles faced ever-rising problems of crime, traffic congestion and pollution.

Councilman Nate Holden, who Bradley narrowly defeated last year, noted in an interview that 17 people were slain in Los Angeles County last weekend while the mayor was in Europe.

“I don’t know what’s going on in this city. It’s a war,” Holden said. The amount of time Bradley spends away from the city, he said, is “a judgment call and the mayor’s got to decide that for himself.”

Holden is one of the few council members who has not left the city in recent weeks.

The council has canceled six of its last seven regularly scheduled meetings because so many members were either out of town or unavailable. The council last met on Sept. 18 and will not meet again until Tuesday.

Council President John Ferraro joined Bradley for the last two weeks of the European trip. Other council members who were out of town include Marvin Braude, Joan Milke Flores, Joel Wachs, Robert Farrell, Joy Picus, Gloria Molina and Michael Woo.

While the mayor is away from the city, he is required to notify certain council members in writing that they will serve as acting mayor in his absence. During the European trip, Ferraro, Braude, Flores and Ernani Bernardi took turns serving as acting mayor, depending on who was in town.

When Bradley travels abroad, he routinely puts in long days and seldom takes any personal vacation time, according to his staff. Spokesman Chandler said the mayor’s only vacation in the last decade was a 1983 trip to Bermuda.

“People don’t see how exhausted the mayor is after he gets back from these trips,” Fabiani added.

The mayor’s wife said that she long ago stopped accompanying her husband on out-of-town travel because he is too busy meeting with diplomats and attending official functions.

“I went to New Zealand 13 years ago for two weeks and I never saw the man,” Ethel Bradley said in an interview. “I can stay home and not see the mayor.”

The mayor’s wife said she wishes the media would follow Bradley on his foreign travels so they could see the warm reception he receives abroad.

“I was shocked when I first went to England and Japan and saw how he was treated,” she said. “Everything is done for him just like he is a king.”

Times staff writers Jane Fritsch and Rich Connell contributed to this story.

FOREIGN TRIPS BY MAYORS The number of official foreign trips taken since January, 1987, by mayors of the 10 most populous U.S. cities:

CITY AND MAYOR(S) TOTAL TRIPS 1. New York: Ed Koch 3; David Dinkins 0 3 2. Los Angeles: Tom Bradley 14 3. Chicago:;Eugene Sawyer 1;Richard Daley 1 2 3. Harold Washington 0; 4. Houston: Kathy Whitmire 6 5. Philadelphia: W. Wilson Goode 0 6. San Diego: Maureen O’Connor *3 7. Dallas: Annette Strauss *15 8. Phoenix: Terry Goddard 2;Paul Johnson 1 3 9. Detroit: Coleman Young 1 10. San Antonio: Henry Cisneros 2; Lila Cockrell 3 5

*Travel expenses paid for with private funds.

SOURCE: Telephone survey of mayoral offices. NOTE: Rank of cities based on preliminary 1990 U.S. Census information.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s official foreign travels from 1979 to the present: 1979

Jan. 1-16: Africa

May 25-28: Mexico City

June 13-July 4: China, South Korea

1980

June 6-14: Argentina

1981

Feb. 17: Canada

Oct. 11-18: Japan

1982