UTA training trip costing $8,202 happened just before announcing route changes

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Transit Authority spent $8,202.13 to send five employees to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in February, according to records obtained by the Deseret News.

Nine days after the conference, UTA sent the public a message — crafted by some of the UTA employees who went to Fort Lauderdale — announcing bus and train route changes that were to help save the quasi-public agency $3 million.

The news that UTA is spending on employees' training, combined with recent news that the salary of UTA Chief Executive Officer John Inglish is among the highest in the U.S., could bother Wasatch Front residents whose taxes help fund UTA, said Matthew Burbank, chairman of the University of Utah Department of Political Science.

"Of course, with this sort of expenditure, I can't say anything about the substance of it. It may be a perfectly valid expenditure, but it does raise the question of if you're cutting back everywhere else, why are you traveling to Florida?" Burbank said.

The Deseret News looked at receipts from the trip using Utah's open records law, the Government Records Access and Management Act, after UTA confirmed the trip. The Deseret News filed the GRAMA request shortly after the trip, when several UTA customers publicly questioned the expenditures. However, UTA advised the newspaper to wait until all employees' receipts were turned in.

Employees stayed at the Westin Beach Hotel where the conference was held, at a cost of $3,443.40. UTA paid $2,375, or $475 for each employee, on "early bird" registration. Plane tickets were $1,754.20.

Food cost $389.07, and UTA spent $240.46 for "miscellaneous" expenses.

UTA defends sending employees to the conference. They learned about the strategies used by public transit agencies throughout the United States to "increase ridership, attract new riders that haven't ridden the train before and encourage ridership" of existing users, UTA spokesman Gerry Carpenter said.

The information gleaned in Florida had nothing to do with crafting the message about the $3 million in bus and train cutbacks, Carpenter said. It's just that the timing between the two happened to be close.

"UTA is a unique agency," Carpenter said. "Basically, we're the only ones who offer this type of service in this market. Training opportunities in the public transit arena are limited locally."

The Fort Lauderdale trip represents a fraction of the $297,812 budget for training that UTA provides for its employees. That budget is down about 20 percent from previous years.