Mayor defends trip to Israel
Defending the cost of his weeklong trip to Israel, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Wednesday that the city learned invaluable lessons and created new relationships to improve security, environmental technology and economic benefits for Los Angeles. Daily News.
"I am mayor of Los Angeles, a global city and not some little city in the desert," Villaraigosa said at a City Hall news conference only hours after his return. "It is important for us to have and sustain our relationships."
No official cost figures have been released, but most estimates put the cost of the trip at $100,000. It is being financed by the departments of Airports, Harbor and Water and Power.
Councilman Jack Weiss, who was part of the 33-person delegation accompanying Villaraigosa, said the mayor was accorded the same access that would be given a presidential candidate.
1 Comments
Leave a comment
About The
Sausage Factory
Los Angeles Daily News City Hall reporter Rick Orlov writes about politics on the local, state and national stage.
There has been an absurd amount of attack on the Mayor for this trip -- only his first foreign trip in exactly a year, when the one to Mexico/Central America was aborted after a day by the May Day Melee. As though there aren't a number of Deputy Mayors and staff to continue doing their jobs on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, Councilwoman Janice Hahn keeps tooting her horn about just having come back from Israel (doing what, so important to L A?), her visits to important international must-stops like Ischia, Italy and Croatia; Tom LaBonge has visited dozens of cities as an "Ambassador," and so have all the rest of them traipsed around.
As for other Mayors, Villaraigosa is right: Gavin Newsom travels fairly often, as do others -- the Mayors of New York or Chicago would never get dumped on for a trip like his, which is this well focused and organized. One blogger keeps hammering on Antonio for going to Israel instead of Rome, seat of Catholicism and the Pope -- where "his" people feel a connection. (Actually, "the Holy Land" is where all the Italian clergy aspire to travel, but never mind, let's get real xenophobic.)
There is something here implying that as a Mexican, he can't break outside of a certain mold (he needs to show us locally that he can, that much is true), but if he goes to Latin America, that's criticized, too. So was Asia, where some claim he hasn't delivered the millions in benefits promised. Look, I'm no big fan of the Mayor, but the double standard by which he's being judged is over the top.