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March 11, 2009 12:29 AM UTC

Ritter Criticized for Pricey China Plane Tix

  • 49 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

From Channel 7 News:

In the middle of the current economic crisis, Gov. Bill Ritter and nine other state employees spent more than $78,000 to conduct a trade mission to Asia that included taxpayers paying for business-class flights and five-star hotels, a CALL7 investigation found.

Ritter defended the trip and the expenses, saying it is important to market the state overseas so that foreign businesses will bring investment and jobs into the Colorado.

“It’s important for us to continue to economically develop this state,” Ritter told CALL7 Investigator Tony Kovaleski. “And to have a strategy for doing that.”

But before and after the trip, Ritter and his staff knew the state was facing a large budget shortfall.

“We think our first order of business should be to prudently manage the budget,” Ritter said during his State of the State address less than two months after the Asia trip.

Travel documents show that taxpayers paid $6,615 each for three business class tickets that Ritter and two other top state officials used to fly ANA Airlines from Los Angeles to Tokyo and back. That was a total of nearly $20,000…

…All 10 state employees stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Beijing and while the state obtained a discounted rate of about $230 a night per room, a search on travel Web sites shows that four- and five-star rooms that are could be found for about $150 a night.

Don Elliman, head of the state Office of Economic Development and International Trade, said there were discussions about cancelling or scaling back the trip but state officials decided to go forward.

“Could it have been canceled?” Kovaleski asked

“We talked about it — discussed it. I think the governor and I came to the same conclusion,” Elliman said.

“Is this trip justifiable?” Kovaleski asked.

“Oh, I believe it was yes,” he said…

…Ritter justified the trip, saying 10 other governors had been to Asia in the past year to drum up business. Specifically, he said the governor of Oregon was there just the day before.

But the comparison to Oregon’s trip shows how Colorado’s trip could have been done for less money.

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski spent less than $51,000 for the trade trip, taking seven people for nine days. Colorado’s trip cost 35 percent more with its 10 state delegates traveling for 11 days.

Kulongoski also paid $2,900 for economy class while Ritter flew business class at $3,700 more than Oregon taxpayers paid.

Look, criticizing the Governor’s office for not getting a slightly cheaper deal on hotel rooms is a bit silly, but it was an avoidable mistake to pay for business class flights. Ritter’s office should have known that would look bad, whether it was justifiable or not–and pointing out Oregon’s example (they flew coach) didn’t exactly help. No doubt we haven’t seen the last of this little story, however inconsequential it’s exactly the sort of thing voters love to hate: watch for it during your favorite commercial break in the fall of 2010.

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49 thoughts on “Ritter Criticized for Pricey China Plane Tix”

  1. If people knew the details about this guy he would not be on the air.

    And yeah, dumb move Governor. Nothing I’m going to demand impeachment over, but could have been smarter–like hiring Greg Kolomitz.

  2. There was no reason not to fly coach, and using the Governor of Oregon’s trip to justify his own was doubly stupid when he didn’t know that Kulongoski actually tried to be thrifty. Instead of just admitting his office could have spent tens of thousands of dollars less than they did, he just ends up making excuses.

    The fact remains, however, that despite the overspending, this was a legitimate trip. I hope what people take away from this is that it could have been planned better–not that it was worthless.

    1. …I’ve only done similar trips for Uncle Sam, and I was grumpy, disheveled mean piece of work once I unfolded my body from the coach seat.

      Luckily, all I had to do was unpack a vehicle and other crap from a military conex….If I had to go to a business meeting which required polite conversation and friendly demeanor, I’d probably have started a war.

      Now, they could’ve gone down a level on the hotel rooms – though I’ve  never stayed in China, so it might be a similar deal to staying in downtown Denver for a meeting.

      1. could hush this up pretty quick if he could present a business contract he secured by this trip.

        He also could point out that Denver is one of the only Cities in the USA with a Sister-city program with a City from China.  

      1. I want to put the best and the brightest in office, and reward them lucratively so that the best and the brightest will want to be in office. I think this obsession with depriving people usually (not always) talented enough to thrive in the private sector of rewards even vaguely commensurate, while punishing with this nosy-neighbor scrutiny of every aspect of their personal lives, is completely dysfunctional.

        1. And I don’t really care that much aside from the political ramifications (bad PR, attack ads in 2010) which are really minimal. If this is the best the Republicans can do next year, then Ritter will win by double digits.

          As far as the airplane travel: I doubt that flying coach would ever stop “the best and brightest” from running for Governor. In my view those who seek public office–especially high office like Governor–are rarely drawn to the fringe benefits, and are more drawn by the office itself. The promise of power far outweighs the limos, first class plane rides and black tie dinners–those benefits are merely ancillary.

          1. but when the people are stingy about those little perks, it both takes some of the luster off the office, and makes it seem a more thankless task. Clearly, that’s not enough to have more than a marginal effect on people who are attracted to public office for good reasons, but even that marginal effect does not serve the public interest.

            I’m not suggesting that public office should lavish riches on people: We should keep the rewards modest, so that people are attracted by the reward of doing a good job more than the reward of being enriched. But let them relish the trappings of the position a little.

  3. First off, any successful businessperson will tell you that at times like this smart companies make strategic investments. You can discuss if this met the criteria of important and strategic. But to just say no trip like this should be considered – that’s short-sighted.

    Second, even el-cheapo Microsoft (where even Bill felw coach in the continental US) paid for business class for international flights. We want Ritter & Co arriving in good enough shape to sell.

    1. This money is surely covered by their budget and is a drop in the bucket for the whole state. Also, making people sit in coach on an intercontinental flight is just cruel. The Oregonians, home to Nike and a major port, can afford to punish their staff that way. We can’t.

    2. from flying coach many hours. Ever hear od deep vein thrombosis. I’m fairly tall and fairly cheap so a couple of years ago took a cheap ticket to Seattle from DIA and my left leg, the one next to bulkhead, was almost paralyzed for a couple of days.

  4. 3 more people + 2 more days = 35% more?

    Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t sound so bad…  Maths iz hard…

    Any-whoodle, it seriously took them months to figure this out?  Lame…

    1. $51,000/9 days/7 people comes to about $800.

      $78,000/11 days/10 people comes to about $700.

      But who the hell are we?

      Rough time to be a politician, yikes.

      1. That single computation completely demolishes the entire point of this article.

        From a previous version of the article:

        CALL7 Investigators have spent months looking through boxes of documents and contacting sources about the trip and 7NEWS will report new information about the trade mission in future reports on 7NEWS and on TheDenverChannel.com.

        I’m kind of curious about how much money they spent investigating this story. Months of work with several investigators? I’d think you spend more than $80,000 just in salary and expenses on that. Seems like a much bigger waste of money than this trip, since there’s a chance this trip might actually benefit the state.

        I suppose if you have a relatively small budget for investigations, and you blow it all on one story, it’s really important that you find something after all that work. Worrying about taking a minute to do a computation that might undermine your work would probably be your last priority.

  5. While I don’t have a problem with elected officials taking necessary business trips on behalf of the state, it doesn’t seem right to live it up on the people’s money.  I’ve flown overseas before and coach isn’t bad.  It sure beats the heck out of flying international on a military cargo plane (which I have done before).  Maybe the governor could have done something to recognize the situation we’re in.  Maybe they should have checked to see if any of the staff would have volunteered to sit in coach.  Maybe Ritter could have covered the $3700.00 difference between the coach ticket and the business class if he didn’t think he could act professionally after suffering through a long international flight.

    I am more impressed by leaders who sacrafice things to show they are smart managers as opposed to people who try to make a statement with other people’s money.

    If this is how he handles the small drops in the bucket, what’s going on elsewhere?

    1. do you feel the same way about corporate junkets? Pricey corporate jets? Luxury suites at 5 star resorts? All the other ways corporations spend company (that is, investor’s) money? If not, why is that different than this case?

      1. And I am proud to say that my company has limited our expenses by a) downgrading the cars that we rent, b) suspending limo service, c) downgrading to coach for flights, and d) suspending pay raises for executive officers.

        Things like that has allowed us to avoid making any layoffs, one of the few major companies to have done so.

        1. I think they, and all the rest, should be doing that in good times as well as bad. I’m probably in a tiny minority, though, since stock prices seldom reflect a rational way of valuing the company, and since many if not most investors seem happy with any profit and don’t ask the hard questions. I bet you’re in the minority of investors as well.

          Still, we have to take the long view here. As I pointed out, comparing Colorado to Oregon is comparing apples to oranges. All three Pacific states have thriving business relationships with China, by dint of having major corporations that do business with China headquartered in all three states and of course by being on the Pacific coast (all those made in China goods pass through their ports).

          Colorado, having neither major corporations (that I know of) doing business with China nor being a point of entry for Chinese goods, has a harder case to make. So they have to send a bigger team and stay for a longer period. They also have to fly a longer distance. I bet most of the team members weren’t 20-somethings either – if you think you’re still going to fly intercontinental flights coach in your 40s or 50s and it won’t be a problem, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise.

          Finally, saying that $20k could pay a new teacher’s salary, while factually correct, is logically incorrect; the governor’s budget isn’t tied to the education budget, so that money will never go to some worthier cause any of us can imagine. You can call it “our” money, but we taxpayers paid it to the government and elected representatives to determine how it should be spent. We can find lots of expenditures we don’t agree upon, and can contact our reps to please do something about it. But something like this? Do we really want to micromanage our government? If you don’t trust the government to that degree, then do you really believe in representative government?

          1. It is great for our company, for its investors, and for the thousands of people they employ (it’s only a few hundred here though).  I too would hope that we and others continue to manage expenses wisely.  While we were better then most to begin with, we have managed to find literally over a hundred million dollars worth of cost saving expenses.  We began putting the brakes on May of last year, and so far we’re ok.

            That’s why this frustrates me a little bit.  I don’t think the trip was the problem, I am all for running ads to promote tourism, making trips to encourage investing, or “selling” the state.

            But it says a lot when you get a $6,000 ticket at the state’s expense as opposed to $3,000.  Or a $250.00 a night room when you can get one for $150.00.  And while I wouldn’t mirco-manage Ritter’s budget, I think it is telling how he spends it.  If he’s not able to spend his own little budget wisely to get the biggest bang for his buck, what does that say about waste in other areas?  He’s supposed to be the one that fixes our budget mess?

            It’s the $27,000 savings here and there that can make a difference.  If you don’t want to compare it to an individual’s job, that’s fine.  But if our governor could save like Oregon’s governor did, he could have paid for this trip and half of another one like it.  Imagine how much more he could have accomplished with two trips?

            Everyone else is making sacrafices–saving here and there trying to make money stretch further–and they’ve been doing it for a long time.  Why is Ritter immune?

            1. I don’t think he’s immune from criticism. I just don’t think it’s appropriate here. As droll demonstrates below, we’re not talking about that great of a difference in expenses here. Heck, it might all be because Oregon’s travel planner is better at negotiating than ours is.

              When the governor’s office does something really egregious, I’ll be right there to criticize. (Like I will about Obama signing all those earmarks today.) This doesn’t meet the standard IMO.

      2. The investor chooses to invest his money in a private corporation.  Unless you are an Obama cabinent appointee, you don’t get to choose whether you “invest” your money in the tax system 🙂

        1. not. Just tackling the literal suggestion in your tired and weak attack on a barely stained new administration: Do you really believe that Geithner and company are the only people who have ever had such discrepencies on their tax returns? Are you really suggesting that such practices, certainly not of the most lofty nature, are among the most horrid of all sins committed by people in, or out of, office? Do you think that they compare favorably or poorly to condoning torture, kidnapping and denying due process to often innocent foreigners kidnapped off of foreign streets in violation of international law, engaging in “extraordinary rendition” in order to avoid being bound by our own relatively humane policies, eliminating regulaton on our financial institutions to the point that the abuses that followed have completely tanked the world financial system, obstructing scientific advances with enormous potential for curing a wide range of crippling and fatal diseases, pre-emptively attacking sovereign countries on the basis of intelligence falsified by the executive branch, to name just a few of the horrors from which we must now recover…?

          Oh, my gosh, Robert, how you shame us Democrats with your rapier insights into the relative weights of various forms of immoral conduct!

  6. So the President (Chief Executive of our Nation) gets to have his own plane which he can use as much as he wants to fly anywhere in top luxury but our Governor (Chief Executive of our State) can’t even fly business class on a commercial flight??

    Give me a break!

  8. This is a remarkably stupid story. Typical of lazy MSM playing gotcha because talking about something really important is too much work. I do not want my gov making a lengthy flight sandwiched into a cramped seat and then stay at a Chinese Motel 6. Successful executives have to be on top of their game to get results.

    1. This is “gotcha” journalism at its best, but at the same time, Ritter’s team should have known this story would happen if they did this.

      1. by republican and democratic governors, and yes many have flown business class and stayed at expensive hotels – trips to Asia are expensive.  It’s nothing new and its nothing extraordinary.  

      2. How much are we projecting that we need to cut from the budget?  How many jobs could be on the block?  The governor from Oregon’s trip saved as much as a new teacher makes in a year.

        For crying out loud, a governor isn’t some sort of sanctified figure too good to sit on coach, like the rest of us do when we fly anywhere.  You guys are making it sound like it was either a) fly business class or b) fly in a cage next to chickens and goats.

        Is calling them out for the fact they “should have known this story would happen” really as bad as it’s going to get?  They overspend by $27,000, and their worst crime is what-letting bad press happen?

        C’on!  Where are the venomous attacks that would be hurled if this was a Republican?  Or calls for a full audit accounting for how the rest of the money was spent?  Oh, how about one of these left wing groups call for an ethics investigation?  If this is “gotcha politics” to you Dems, you have pretty thin skin!  🙂  

        1. This trip was four months ago, and had been planned months before that. Maybe the governor should have had a crystal ball, but we weren’t in nearly the straits we are now. If I’m not mistaken (and I could be), we weren’t even sure we had been in a recession yet by mid November, and were still holding out hope Christmas could save the economy.

          So to hold Ritter to Great Recession standards for something he did when things were just starting to get bad — ludicrous. Now, if he planned a similar trip without economizing this week, that would be another thing entirely.

          1. The alarm bells have been going off for a long time.  We’ve been in the recession since December 2007, and while that wasn’t confirmed officially until December 2008, there have been steady reports of sales tax shortfalls and other revenue declines since well before November.  So in short, things weren’t just starting to get bad in November.  Remember that the crash that effectively ended McCain’s campaign happened well….before November.

            As a side note, I like your phrase “the great recession”.  I think it precisely portrays the situation we’re in.  Not a normal recession, not a depression.  

            I like it.

            1. It’s all semantics. There are official standards by economists what is what.  If you are laid off, it’s worse than what the semantical standards are.

              We have not been in these economic straits for 120 years.  Still not as bad as 1932, but not looking real good; see Warren Buffet’s prediction of  a worsening 2009.  While 1932 and 2009 have a lot of differences, this much is in common: Republican policies and lack of action have caused and exacerbated most of the problems.

              We don’t have the soup lines and Hoovervilles of yore, but that’s because of the safety nets the New Deal and subsequent legislations have done.  (Which R’s generally fought.)

              Don’t forget that unemployment and many other statistics are not calculated the same as back then.  Our real unemployment rate is probably in the 15% area.  

              I don’t know about you, but that’s a tad too close to the 25% of the First Republican Great Depression for me.

        2. .

          I’ve audited thousands of (federal) government travel vouchers, and about 100,000 credit card statements.  Nothing here raises my eyebrows.

          .

  10. I flew coach out to Hawaii and almost couldn’t walk off the plane I was so crammed in.  I don’t know how tall Governor Ritter is but flying to China that way would have wrecked me.  Maybe saving some on the rooms wouldn’t have been a bad idea.  But pointing out business for the state drummed up by the trip would be the best way to counter the story.

  12. If Owens had done this, I’m sure the folks on this site would be all up in arms about elitist hypocrisy and disrespect for the common man.  But what is truly amazing is how poorly the Governor handled the interview.  More evidence that Bill Ritter is the worst Governor IN THE WORLD.  We can do better — a lot better.  Bad policies.  Bad politics.  Bad governor.

    1. Ritter appears to be the 1st Governor to insist on business class

      Are you the travel agent for the state’s executive branch?  Are you a secret agent for UAL?  or, do you just like to say whatever pops into your head (no judgment on the last point)

    2. Man you like to swing a big net.  Maybe you should have said in the US?  But that wouldn’t suit your hyperbole.  

      OK, down to the US?  Worse than all other 49?

      Yeah, right.  

      1. Due to his ubelievable culture of corruption, but Ritter is tops in incompetence for certain.  How someone could sign a bill raising taxes (yes, taxes, not fees) and then not stop his own party from pushing through a bill to largely undo what he just held a press event championing is beyond belief.  I guess he was for transportation funding before he was against it.  Hat tip to Keith Olbermann for the phrase, though.  The worst Governor IN THE WORLD.

        1. The Governor is not undoing through SB 228 what he accomplished through SB 208. Transportation’s primary funding remains the HUTF, not HB1310 and SB 1 which has been very erratic over the years.  In fact, CDOT doesn’t expect any of those funds over the next several years. Your assertion of incompetence is absurd.

          You continue to make unsubstantiated assertions against Governor Ritter.  What is your factual support for any of them.

    3. So many state their abitrary opinions; so few give others any reason to be convinced by those opinions.

      If you, and the ideology you represent, are seeking irrelevance, continued reliance on noise-devoid-of-signal is certain to be a successful strategy.

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