Tim Steller's column: Jet deal, secrecy undermine Tucson mayor's trip to Qatar

Six days of stories about a Qatari jet had been published when Tucson Mayor Regina Romero took off on a jet headed for Qatar.

The mayor’s trip was a secret at the time.

President Trump’s desire for of a $400 million jet was not.

The juxtaposition of the two stories made the eventual revelation of the mayor’s trip look sketchy.

It’s not that Mayor Romero taking an international trip is necessarily a bad thing. Mayors sometimes travel, hopefully to the benefit of their cities.

What raised eyebrows was that the mayor’s trip was initially a secret, that the city at first gave false information about who paid for it, and that she went to an elite gathering in Qatar of all places, paid for by the Qataris.

As the information dribbled out, eyebrows rose.

Qatar is a country that, in my mind, was synonymous with international bribery and corruption long before the recent Trump-jet episode, in which the president allegedly solicited a new, $400 million Air Force One as a gift. In 2010, Qatar improbably won the right to host the 2022 men’s soccer World Cup. Quickly, accusations arose that they had paid bribes to win it, eventually leading to a U.S. Justice Department indictment.

That’s just one example. There’s also “Qatargate,” a scheme to bribe members of the European parliament. New Jersey’s former U.S. Senator, Robert Menendez, is in prison in part for taking bribes to support Qatar. Raytheon Co. also admitting paying bribes to Qatari officials in order to win contracts.

Qatar is a country of about 2.7 million people, about 85% of whom are migrant workers, leaving around 400,000 citizens who seemingly shower oil money around the world. Qatar has been a friend to the United States during our wars in the Middle East, yes, and host to some important international negotiations, but it’s got to have one of the highest rates of international bribery per citizen in the world.

And our mayor was representing Tucson at the invitation-only Qatar Economic Forum on their dime.

Incorrect information

Word of the mayor’s trip began spreading last weekend when the Tucson Police Protective League questioned on Facebook whether her police security detail traveled with her to Phoenix to make the trip abroad.

The mayor did not announce the trip in advance, and in fact, social-media posts that appeared on her accounts while she was gone gave the impression she might still be in town. There was one post of the fireworks at the UA graduation, for example, and another summarizing Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

Romero’s chief of staff, Charlene Mendoza, told me this is typical of how the office handles the mayor’s travels. They discuss trips publicly after she returns, not before they occur, “for the same reason we don’t release the mayor’s calendar in advance.”

“It’s a security risk,” she said.

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As word of the trip trickled out, my colleague Charles Borla asked city spokespeople who had paid for the trip. One of them, Andy Squire, said it was Bloomberg Philanthropies, which wouldn’t have been surprising, since Bloomberg is lead sponsor of the Qatar Economic Forum.

“I just made a mistake. I thought I had confirmed it with their team and I was wrong,” Squire told me Friday.

It required Borla and me checking in with the Kansas City Star newspaper and that city’s government to realize that it was probably the Qatari embassy who paid for Mayor Romero’s trip. Kansas City’s mayor, too, attended and had acknowledged he was part of a delegation of U.S. mayors sponsored by the host country.

Mendoza then confirmed on Wednesday that this was the case with Romero, too.

Promoting Tucson

City Manager Tim Thomure noted at Tuesday’s City Council meeting that Visit Tucson and the newly renamed Chamber of Southern Arizona had worked with Romero to prepare her to promote Tucson at the Qatar Economic Forum.

“It is great that our mayor is representing our community on the global stage and showcasing the opportunities our city offers,” he said. “International forums like this are where connections are made and investments begin.”

Mendoza described it as like trade missions that the mayor or other local officials have taken to places as near as Chicago or as far as Singapore. Usually, they take time to bear fruit.

“We are constantly cultivating these relationships,” Mendoza said. “Economic development is a long game. It isn’t very common that you go and come back with a particular contract.”

And yet, this was Qatar at a particularly ugly moment of open bribery in relation to the United States. Undoubtedly, Doha has its charms, but secrecy and the stink of corruption seem to cling to the place. Just May 8 this year, a TV station in Washington D.C. was finally able to report who paid for that city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, to travel with four staff members to the Qatar Economic Forum two years ago.

It was, of course, the government of Qatar.

‘The hard work of business’

It’s possible, of course, Tucson will land some big business deal due to Romero’s attendance at the Qatar Economic Forum. That would be great.

“Every time I come to Doha, it’s easy to see the commercial progress in the physical environment,” Michael Bloomerg said in his introduction to the conference, which is available for viewing online. “What people don’t see are the quiet corners, the rooms where behind the scenes the hard work of business, partnership and diplomacy gets done.”

What we know for sure, though, is that our mayor got a chance to hear speakers such as Sheikh Saoud Salem Abdulaziz Al-Sabah, managing director of the Kuwait Investment Authority, and Ryan Lance, chairman and CEO of ConocoPhillips. Along with getting an expense-free trip to Qatar.

Of course, I can’t shake the feeling that whether it’s a $400 million jet or a junket to Doha, you don’t get anything from Qatar for free.