Mayor Hancock and some city council members have been living it up on the DIA dime, accepting all-expense-paid trips to New York and abroad over the past five years at an extraordinary total cost of more than $426,000.
For kicks and giggles, we Googled how much it would cost to travel around the world for a year, and it turns out the mayor could have taken 17 trips. Around the World. For a year.
But instead, he took one trip to Dubai that cost $16,502, while Councilman Kevin Flynn “shelled out $10,058 for a series of flights, the bulk of which were business class” to Amsterdam and London, reports Colorado Public Radio.
The trips were brutal, Flynn defends. He had to get up early in the morning and like, go places. It was anything but pleasure.
Right, we hear Amsterdam is like the worst trip ever for the 14 million tourists who flock there every year.
DIA is spinning and making excuses like crazy as to why they are spending hundreds of thousands a year on luxury travel for the mayor and council.
And it has nothing to do with the billions of dollars in construction contracts approved by the council before five of them jetted off to Amsterdam, we are lamely assured.
The CPR report examines the ethics of what DIA, the mayor and council have been up to. One of those expensive trips taken by the mayor also included a political fundraiser in New York.
Meanwhile, Flynn suggests the city amend the ethics code, to explicitly allow for the luxury trips.
This is an interesting new standard of ethical behavior the city is proposing — as long as those accepting the perks say it’s ethical, then it must be.