Expense-paid Japan travel for lawmakers, regulators bothers consumer advocates
Sacramento Bee (California)
A consumer advocacy group is demanding full disclosure of the details of an all-expenses-paid trip to Japan undertaken this week by three state legislators and two state regulators.
The state officials are accompanied by top executives from the industries — energy and telecommunications — they are charged with overseeing and regulating.
The week-long trip, detailed by The Bee on Tuesday, is underwritten by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, a San Francisco nonprofit group not required by law to disclose its donors.
“It was with great concern that we learned of your participation in a ‘study trip’ to a foreign country with the very companies you are charged with overseeing,” wrote Carmen Balber of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, in letters to Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, and Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego.
Levine and Kehoe, both in Japan since March 29, are the chairman and chairwoman of the energy and telecommunications committees, respectively, in the Legislature.
“The public interest demands full disclosure of your interactions, and connections, with gas, electricity and telecommunications companies,” Balber wrote, asking for copies of all correspondence, memos, expenditures and appointment calendars from the Tokyo trip.
Balber said her organization made similar requests of two other trip-goers, Timothy Simon and Rachelle Chong, members of the Public Utilities Commission, the state agency charged with regulating California’s multibillion-dollar telecom and energy industries. A third lawmaker, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, is also on the trip.
Lawmakers and regulators have defended the trip as worthwhile policy education. In letters justifying their participation, Chong and Simon wrote that “a firsthand understanding of how other policymakers are addressing these issues is critical.”
Among those joining the state officials in Japan are executives from AT&T, Comcast and Sound Energy Solutions, a company devoted to installing a liquefied natural gas terminal off the shores of Long Beach.
The nonprofit group sponsoring the trip declined to release a full list of those on the trip, though the group’s board of directors is dominated by executives at the biggest energy and telecom companies in California, including AT&T, Verizon, PG&E, Chevron, Sempra Energy, Southern California Edison and BHP Billiton. The organization’s board also has several academics, as well as labor and environmental representatives.
Balber likened the Japan trip to those taken by Jack Abramoff, the now-jailed Washington, D.C., lobbyist.
But Patrick Johnston, the chairman of the group sponsoring the trip and a former state lawmaker himself, said such accusations are unfounded.
“CFEE, for three decades, has been organized to provide policy forums and study trips in compliance with all the laws and regulations that have been enacted, so a comparison with a convicted felon seems a bit misplaced,” Johnston said.
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The Bee’s Shane Goldmacher can be reached at (916) 326-5544 or [email protected].
