2 UTA execs spent $47,000 on travels

The Utah Transit Authority spent $47,707 last year on out-of-state travel for its two top executives, more than double what the Utah Department of Transportation spent on its two top bosses.

Most of UTA's money was spent on trips to Washington, D.C., during a time when the agency courted the federal government for funds and favors in building commuter rail. General Manager John Inglish also took two trips to Europe to tour transit systems.

In an interview this month, he defended his travel — which totaled $32,982 in 2006. He said the trips were necessary to elevate UTA's reputation in the transit industry and to learn new technologies. Inglish sits on the executive board of the American Public Transportation Association, and assistant general manager Mike Allegra serves on committees for the national transit group. Allegra's travel in 2006 totaled $14,725.

"UTA is trying to be a cutting-edge agency," Inglish said. "Some of the things we're looking to do are not right here in Salt Lake. Some are not even in the United States."

In comparison, UDOT during the most recent fiscal year spent $11,005 for director John Njord and deputy director Carlos Braceras to travel out of state. Njord spent $5,248 on travel, and Braceras' travel costs were $5,756.

Each man took only one trip to Washington, D.C. The rest of the trips were to cities around the nation, including Minneapolis; Las Vegas; Denver; Baltimore; Honolulu; and Tulsa, Okla.

Travel information for both UDOT and UTA was obtained through an open-records request by the Deseret Morning News.

As a whole, UDOT spent $488,439 in the 2007 fiscal year for 241 of its employees to travel out of state. UTA spent $559,142 for as many as 170 employees to travel out of state.

That means UTA spent almost two-thirds more per employee on out-of-state travel than UDOT.

Njord said there are no restrictions on his travel, but he tries to be judicious in selecting conferences and events to attend out of the state. "If I accepted every offer to travel, I'd be out of the office 100 percent of the time," Njord said in an interview this month.

He encourages his employees to do the same. While in-state travel is very common in the agency, most of the 241 who traveled out of state were "policymakers" in the organization, not engineers who work on road projects, he said.

"Traveling out of the state is difficult for employees," said Njord. "We look at the agendas for each activity and say, 'What's going to come out of this?"'