1. Where did staff travel to?

Atlanta, Kansas City, DC, Memphis, Phoenix, Philadelphia for conferences and training

There was some high-end spending including:

almost $30,000 spent at 4-star Omni hotels

$11,000 spent at 4-star Gaylord Opryland resort

$2,300 at Tradewinds Island Beach Resort in the resort city of St. Pete Beach, Florida

One trip that may raise eyebrows is the $1,000 that Metro paid for Councilman Sean Parker, a Democratic Socialist, to attend the Democratic Socialists of America conference in June. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The furthest travel appears to be under $1,000 for two health employees to attend an AIDS conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico

About half the spending doesn’t say which employee traveled and only some records give details — most of the records give vague details about why a person traveled or where they traveled.

This is in contrast to the school district reporting which employee traveled and gave totals for each employee, including where they traveled.
In some instances, the district provided the name of the conference, the city it’s in, the hotel the employee stayed in.

We reported on the school district’s spending a few weeks ago, spending over $3 million on travel last year.

 

2. How does it compare to other cities?

We looked at the travel records of Clark County, Nevada – they spent $2 million on travel last year, and they also have very incomplete records.

Unlike Metro Nashville, they did break down the spending by department, so we can see, for instance, the DA’s office spent the most.

Both Clark County and Nashville gave vague account on how the money was spent and by which employee or a specific travel purpose, like a conference

Both these governments should be more transparent and have their records include names of people traveled, where and why.