Editorial: Travel rule was long overdue

Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2000 | 9:50 a.m.

North Las Vegas City Councilman John Rhodes was upset when the City Council earlier this month voted to provide greater accountability of council members when they travel. As the Sun's Diana Sahagun reported Friday, Rhodes said during a recent City Council meeting that the change was politically motivated and directed against him. "This is the first time in seven years on the council that my integrity has ever been questioned," Rhodes said.

The question shouldn't be why the policy is changing, however, but why it took so long in the first place to adopt such a common-sense accountability measure. For that matter, rather than taking this personally, Rhodes should have embraced a new policy that will offer some assurance that when council members take trips, they are there on official business. The other council members and Mayor Michael Montandon mentioned that they've been kept in the dark regarding the other council members' travels. The old travel policy only required that the city manager approve the travel requests. There also was no requirement that the council member brief the City Council following the trip.

As Councilwoman Shari Buck correctly noted, the old policy meant that the city manager was put in the untenable position of having to say no to their bosses. In response, the new travel policy requires that a council member obtain the approval of at least two other council members before taking a trip; once the council member returns, he then has to brief the entire council on what he learned during the trip.

So far there haven't been suggestions that council members are engaged in unnecessary jet-setting subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Then again the old policy didn't offer much oversight in this area, either. The North Las Vegas City Council did the right thing in requiring this basic accountability measure. There's no need to keep secrets when taxpayer money is involved.