Energy on tour - Energy Sec. Hazel O'Leary's excesssive world travel - No Sacred Cows

Common Cause Magazine, Spring-Summer, 1996 by Christina Davilas

Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary may have provided Democrats and Republicans with an example of unnecessary government spending they can actually agree on: T-shirts featuring a globe encircled by the words "O'Leary's World Tour."

According to Brett Coulson, an aide to Rep. Martin Hoke (R-Ohio), the T-shirts were to have been printed at taxpayer expense and then distributed to O'Leary's traveling companions, both government employees and captains of American industry. An Energy Department employee created the design last summer, but the project was called off after news of the T-shirts leaked out.

But, thanks to Hoke, it's still a sore subject in the secretary's office.

And the T-shirt design is the least of O'Leary's problems. House Republicans, led by Hoke, launched a full-scale investigation of the secretary's apparent wanderlust and her penchant for traveling in style. O'Leary has taken more than 100 foreign and domestic trips, and on three of her trade missions she used a luxury charter j et once favored by rock star Madonna. O'Leary spent a whopping $2.6 million on her missions to China, Pakistan, India and South Africa; to cover the cost the Department of Energy (DOE) shifted funding from one account to another. She's also traveled to Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna and Florence.

A U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) report issued last December--requested, incidentally, by Hoke--found that DOE officials had no records for some $80,000 of DOE's $730,000 in expenditures for the India trip. The report also found that the department picked up at least part of the tab for business executives and nonfederal government employees who traveled with O'Leary.

DOE has since "acknowledged [its] flaws and fixed them," says spokesperson Carmen MacDougall. Non-DOE passengers are now required to "pay their way in full," she says.

But some big-time contributors to the Democratic Party may feel they already have. On the Pakistan trip alone, 17 of the 79 business executives or their companies were soft-money contributors: 10 of them to both parties, four only to the GOP and another three only to the Democrats. MacDougall denies that contributions bought seats on the secretary's jet, dismissing allegations of any quid pro quo as "ridiculous." For her part, O'Leary defends the trade missions as effective in generating business for American firms. But the T-shirt design only adds to the perception that the expensive taxpayer-financed jaunts were about pleasure as much as business.

When first contacted about the design, Carolyn Wallace, the secretary's executive assistant, denied that it originated at Energy. But MacDougall later 'fessed up, saying "someone thought it would be a funny gift for the secretary," and insisting that tax dollars would not have paid for the shirts. Asked where the money would have come from, MacDougall replies that "it was not thought through.

"Clearly, in retrospect," she says, "it was a dumb idea." CD.