S.F. Mayor Ed Lee, wife get over $95,000 in travel last year

Globe-trotting Mayor Ed Lee and his wife were treated to more than $95,000 in travel last year courtesy of private donors and foundations.

According to the mayor's annual economic interest statement, filed Tuesday, Lee took seven trips in 2013, with his wife representing him overseas on another.

Five of the trips were sponsored by local nonprofit groups that encourage cultural exchanges between San Francisco and its sister cities.

Among them:

-- A $21,986 journey to Paris last March that Lee took with his wife, Anita, "to enhance cultural and economic ties" between San Francisco and its sister city.

-- A $22,292 trip in October to China and South Korea, sponsored largely by the San Francisco-Shanghai Sister City Committee - travel the mayor cut short to deal with the BART strike at home.

-- Another trip to China, this one lasting six days and costing $13,781, in which Lee and his wife participated in the Wuhan International Friendly City Summit. The mayor signed a friendship city agreement with Chaozhou officials.

-- A $19,837 sister-city trip to Bangalore, India, from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10, on which Lee was also accompanied by his wife.

Lee's wife also represented the mayor on a sister-city trip to Haifa, Israel, at a cost of $3,546. There she joined a delegation attending a symposium on emergency management.

In addition, the mayor reported three trips to New York to attend conferences, at a total cost of more than $11,600. They included a tech summit hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies ($5,901), a housing conference sponsored by JPMorgan Chase ($1,691) and the Clinton Global Initiative conference, paid for by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group ($4,056).

Lee's disclosure forms also list $1,363 in travel expenses picked up by the city council in Cork, Ireland, where he appeared as the grand marshal in last year's St. Patrick's Day parade.

Lee's 66-page report also itemized dozens of $440 gifts from individuals who helped underwrite portions of his overseas travels - including former Mayor Willie Brown, who now writes a weekly column for The Chronicle, and Chinatown consultant Rose Pak. Another underwriter was a Mercedes-Benz dealership in San Francisco.

In contrast to Lee's world tours, Gavin Newsom listed just one big excursion abroad during his final year in office that was paid for by donors - a $9,082 "friendship mission" to China, funded by the San Francisco-Shanghai Sister City Committee.

On the other hand, Newsom did score better material gifts than Lee, according to his 2010 disclosure form. They included a $398 Louis Vuitton pen from Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, two Bulgari ties worth $350 total from Nicola Bulgari, and a $250 pair of bear cufflinks and a $170 silver key ring from Tiffany executive Giles Marsden.

Lee's press secretary, Christine Falvey, said the mayor's travels last year were anything but vacations. "This is about creating economic opportunities," she said, "and when he is abroad he is promoting San Francisco."

She said the fact that Aer Lingus started direct flights this week between Dublin and SFO was partly the result of the mayor pushing the issue when he was in Ireland.

Also, she said, the sister city committees that paid for much of the travel include members of diverse communities who "want to see cultural exchanges strengthened."

Lee's privately funded trips stand in contrast to those taken by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. As of last fall, she had billed the city's taxpayers for 21 of the 33 trips she had taken during her nearly three years in office - at a price tag of more than $38,000.