ROCKY'S N.M. TRIP ASSAILED

City Shouldn't Foot His Travel Bill, Council Chief Says

The "war on drugs" is misguided national policy -- and the City
Council's war on him is petty local policy, Salt Lake Mayor Rocky
Anderson says.

After an acrimonious month of dueling over the city's budget, the
mayor is now under fire for leaving town over the weekend. With most
expenses paid by the city, Anderson flew to Albuquerque to give
another in a series of speeches calling for drug-policy reform.

The war on drugs has gone down the wrong path, the mayor often says,
and he said it again Friday during the the Drug Policy Foundation's
national conference.

This issue is among the mayor's passions; he has spoken on it around
the country, from the Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C., to
last summer's Shadow Convention in Los Angeles.

But "this really doesn't involve municipal issues," and the city
shouldn't foot the travel bill, said council chairman Roger Thompson.

At that, Anderson is incredulous.

"How effective our nation's drug policy is impacts our cities
dramatically," he said. "Besides taxpayers paying an enormous amount
to incarcerate people" for minor drug offenses, "we have a lack of
effective treatment programs."

That "war on drugs" money, he added, should be redirected into
prevention and treatment efforts that have been proved to work.

"My commitment is to seeing that in this city . . . we put in place
the best, most effective programs possible."

Anderson added that Councilman Dave Buhler, who has often been
critical of how the mayor spends time and money, sent him an e-mail
challenging his most recent use of public funds.

"My hotel room cost all of $68," Anderson said. The city also paid for
his airfare of $323, but the mayor's assistant said he doesn't take a
per diem.

"I find it extremely petty that (council members) would complain"
about such travel expenses, "when they're the first ones to grab onto
these trips, to the shopping mall in Texas and the submarine in San
Diego," Anderson said.

Four council members flew to California to spend a day and night on
the nuclear submarine USS Salt Lake City in January.

"That," the mayor said, "was a boondoggle."

Four members also went to Grapevine, Texas, last summer to see an
enormous shopping center similar to the then-proposed Grand Salt Lake
Mall. The mayor joined them on that trip. And after much debate, the
council sided with Anderson and rejected the Grand Mall. Now it's hard
to imagine the mayor and council traveling together or standing
together on much of anything. The battle of the budget has had them
arguing, trading angry letters and expressing disgust about one
another for weeks.

The end is near -- fiscal 2002 starts July 1 -- but the council must
find areas to trim the mayor's proposed $524.5 million budget if
they're to balance and adopt it by the end of this month.

Anderson and Salt Lake City International Airport officials were
supposed to fly to Mexico City to negotiate direct Aeromexico flights
between the two capitals, but a flight-attendant strike scrubbed that
jaunt.