ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Two Allentown City Council members are requesting Mayor Matt Tuerk\u2019s administration release detailed records of travel by Tuerk and city staff.<\/p>\n
Council Vice President Cynthia Mota and Councilwoman Candida Affa made the request in a memo sent to Mayor Tuerk, as well as to the city\u2019s Managing Director, City Controller, Finance Department, and HR Department.<\/p>\n
Mota and Affa are asking for a comprehensive travel report, an expense breakdown for each trip, how each trip was paid for, and who joined the mayor on each trip.<\/p>\n
They are also requesting current and past policies and procedures regarding official travel, as well as budget allocations for mayoral travel.<\/p>\n
The councilmembers are asking the administration to provide context on how it determines whether travel qualifies as an official governmental purpose and the standards used to evaluate whether expenses are reasonable and necessary.<\/p>\n
In the memo dated May 8, Mota and Affa asked the administration to provide the information to council within 14 days.<\/p>\n
The request comes after a proposed city council resolution requiring an audit and review of the mayor\u2019s traveling expenses and a review by an independent auditor was referred back to council\u2019s human resources committee. The proposed resolution was met with resistance by two councilmembers and the administration.<\/p>\n
The proposed resolution was sponsored by Councilmembers Candida Affa, Cynthia Mota, Ce-Ce Gerlach and Napoli.<\/p>\n
In the memo, Mota and Affa said they are formally removing their names from the resolution and requesting that it no longer be considered by the committee and council.<\/p>\n
Mota and Affa said in the memo the resolution was intended to ensure transparency and accountability regarding the spending of taxpayer funds.<\/p>\n
The councilmembers said they believe the administration should simply provide documentation on expenses, rather than continue the procedural debate surrounding the resolution itself.<\/p>\n
In the memo, Mota and Affa said the resolution\u2019s referral to committee created additional confusion and delayed access to basic public information.<\/p>\n
At Allentown City Council\u2019s May 6 meeting, Mota said that while some information may already exist, it is often presented in pieces or without full context.<\/p>\n
Mota said at the meeting City Council has a responsibility to provide oversight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat responsibility requires us to review how taxpayers dollars are spent,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cThis is not about accusations; rather, it is about accountability. Transparency is not optional; it is fundamental.”<\/p>\n
69 News has reached out to the mayor\u2019s office for comment on the memo.<\/p>\n
At the May 6 meeting, the city\u2019s Managing Director Frank Kane made a statement on what he says is the economic importance of the mayor\u2019s trips.<\/p>\n
Kane said the city benefits from having a proactive mayor who is quite possibly the city\u2019s biggest fan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s important for someone in the organization to create and maintain and nurture relationships with potential funding partners in the federal and state government and in the nonprofit sector,\u201d Kane said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a foundational component of American democracy that citizens can hold their government accountable as their traditional press morphs into the less traditional blogosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s important that we listen to those voices, too, if some segment of the public has concerns about things relating to the travel of the mayor and the staff in that office,\u201d Kane said.<\/p>\n
He explained, however, that all travel expenses are already audited by the city\u2019s auditor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know why you would want to pay an independent auditor somewhere between $40,000 to $100,000 to do a forensic audit to, to audit what we already audit,\u201d Kane said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’d be paying the same amount that we paid in travel expenses in the last four years to do the audit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Two Allentown City Council members are requesting Mayor Matt Tuerk\u2019s administration release detailed records of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232],"class_list":["post-189380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}