Who pays for Wichita officials’ trips? They now must tell public, but how is unclear

Three Wichita City Council members have accepted high-dollar gifts since creating a carve-out last month that allows them to exceed the city’s $150 annual gift limit with a majority vote of the council.

But you wouldn’t know it from reading the City Council’s agenda packets.

There, the gifts are not identified as gifts. Instead, they are packaged as travel requests alongside trips that are funded by the city — with no stated outside funding sources, no donor names, no estimated value and no list of what expenses are included in the travel request.

There’s also no mention that a vote for the travel is a vote to allow council members to exceed the gift limit set in an ethics ordinance they passed unanimously last month.

Mayor Lily Wu said she would like to see that change.

“I’ve been transparent about all of my travel requests from the bench,” Wu said in an email. “I’m in favor of directing staff to add who is paying for the travel and what they are providing (typically transportation, accommodation, and meals).”

Other council members have also expressed support for changing how the gifts appear on the agenda to increase transparency.

Vice Mayor Maggie Ballard raised the possibility of adding it to the agenda at the Oct. 1 council meeting.

“There seems to be a lot of conversations lately happening about council travel,” Ballard said. “Most people are not going to watch the meeting to see who’s paying for council, so I don’t know if that’s something that we add (to the agenda).”

“I think it’s a little misleading when we’re approving it if someone doesn’t say who’s paying for it,” Ballard said. “I don’t know. It just seems to get a little bit messy. . . . It looks like taxpayers are paying for it sometimes unless you watch the meeting or ask somebody.”

For instance, a recent agenda seeks approval for Wu to travel to Beverly Hills for three days, council member Dalton Glasscock to travel to Malaysia and the Philippines for 16 days and council member Becky Tuttle to travel to Las Vegas for four days. What isn’t listed is who is paying, how much they’re paying and what exactly they’re paying for.

The fact that travel expenses or conference registration fees were being paid by outside organizations was not available until the meeting, when council members volunteered some of the details verbally before the council members cast their votes.

City Attorney Jennifer Magana told council members that, in the past, they have only been required to seek approval for travel that will cost the city $500 or more. Now, they must disclose whether the trip is a gift, she said. But it’s up to council members to decide whether they believe it’s a gift.

The ordinance defines a gift as “anything accepted by a person, whether tangible or intangible, including but not limited to money, goods, services, discounts, gratuities, hospitality, or favors.” Campaign contributions are not considered gifts.

Glasscock said he thinks that full disclosure and a vote is required under the new ethics ordinance when council members accept travel expenses from donors.

“If we receive a gift then it would have to be (approved) from the bench,” Glasscock said.

Wu said in an email that disclosing the gifts in the agenda packet would help the city be more transparent and fall in line with some of her other initiatives as mayor, from holding more evening meetings to loosening restrictions on public comment and requiring plain language in agenda packets to describe ordinances.

“Trust in local government has eroded over many years,” Wu said. “I’d like to play a role in reversing that and restoring trust in City Hall. It won’t happen overnight, but it starts with greater transparency.”

Recently gifted trips

For decades, it has been unclear who is paying — and how much — for out-of-state trips by council members that sometimes do and sometimes don’t appear on the City Council agenda.

An ethics policy approved under former Mayor Brandon Whipple required council members to report any gifts above $50 and prohibited gifts of more than $150 from a single donor in a calendar year.

The City Council voted to adopt the policy as an ordinance on Sept. 10 but created an exception to the $150 cap that allows council members to accept larger gifts if they are “authorized by the City Council by majority vote in a meeting of the City Council.”

Conversations over gift limits for council members have been ongoing since a 2019 Wichita Eagle investigation found former Mayor Jeff Longwell accepted gifts in the form of golf rounds, meals and out-of-state travel from contractors on the team that was ultimately awarded a $500 million contract to design and build the city’s new water treatment plant.

At the time, there were no gift limits for Wichita City Council members.

An investigation by District Attorney Marc Bennett found Longwell failed to report the gifts on his statement of substantial interest, a state-required form for candidates and elected officials where they are required to report any gifts they or their spouses receive valued at or above $500 in a year. Bennett declined to file criminal charges.

When Longwell refiled corrected statements of substantial interest, he also disclosed previously unreported gifts in the form of free flights for him and his wife from Spirit AeroSystems on the company’s private jet in 2016.

Under Whipple, the council approved an ethics policy that capped gifts for elected and appointed city officials for the first time in the city’s history, at $150. The current council turned that policy into an ordinance in September but carved out an exemption that allows council members to accept gifts above $150 “by majority vote in a meeting of the City Council.”

It had previously been up to individual council members to decide whether they voluntarily disclose the trips or the funding source.

Council members regularly accept travel gifts from outside organizations — or even foreign countries.

The practice is under heightened scrutiny nationally following a federal indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is charged with accepting luxury international travel from wealthy businesspeople and at least one foreign government official in exchange for favorable treatment.

Trips trigger controversy

Earlier this year, Wu accepted a trip to Switzerland that was paid for by the Swiss government. The trip brought eight women mayors from the United States to Switzerland meet with government officials and business leaders under the theme “Shaping Urban Landscapes for a Sustainable Future.”

She said the trip would not influence her actions as mayor but also said she hoped to learn new ideas on public safety, housing affordability and economic development that could be implemented in Wichita.

In December, she will travel to Beverly Hills, California, for the Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism, which seeks to train mayors on how to “proactively confront Jew-hatred at the local level, where it is most acutely felt,” according to the event website.

Expenses covered by Combat Hate Foundation include lodging at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and meals that include a cocktail party reception dinner and an “exciting offsite gala dinner.” The Beverly Wilshire is a historic luxury hotel at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive that was the setting for Julia Roberts’s “Pretty Woman” and HBO’s “Entourage.”

Wu said she’s attending to represent the city.

“I’m honored to represent Wichita at a variety of major conferences and help elevate our city on the national and international stage,” she said in an email. “I look forward to joining many other leaders at the 2024 Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism. Our city values respect for all individuals and stands against hate, including antisemitism.”

Wu said city officials from New York City, Las Vegas, Miami, Kansas City, New Orleans and other cities will also attend the summit.

Combat Hate Foundation’s president is an executive with one of the largest oil well drilling companies in Wichita, Berexco, a company whose employees, officers and owners have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and political causes this year, according to Open Secrets.

Glasscock is leaving the country through an exchange program with the American Council of Young Political Leaders, which seeks to provide global perspectives to emerging political leaders between the ages of 25 and 41 years old. The organization is largely funded by the U.S. Department of State and its exchange programs typically feature bipartisan groups of seven to nine leaders.

Glasscock’s trip will begin in Washington, D.C., and end up in the Philippines and Malaysia, where he will meet with government officials, political parties, elected leaders, policy experts and business people and visit historical and cultural sites.

Tuttle is planning to travel to Las Vegas from Oct. 21 to Oct. 24 for the National Business Aviation Association’s business aviation convention and exhibition, where she’ll meet with business leaders in Wichita’s largest industry sector. Council members have attended the convention for several years, including Jeff Blubaugh and Bryan Frye last year, Frye and Tuttle in 2021, Blubaugh and Frye in 2019, Blubaugh in 2017, Pete Meitzner and Blubaugh in 2015 and 2016.

Tuttle said she hasn’t traditionally thought of her trips as gifts because she’s representing the city. The city is paying an undisclosed amount for her travel costs and the Greater Wichita Partnership, an economic-development organization that receives funding from the city, is paying for her registration for the conference. Online registration for the event is $680, according to the conference’s website.

“Most of the time when I am traveling, it’s because I’ve been asked to represent,” Tuttle said. “And so then I don’t consider it as much of a gift when I’m going there to work.”

This story was originally published October 12, 2024 at 4:23 AM.