Council travel under DA's spotlight

More on the expanding DA probe into City Hall expenses: It seems the investigation will look at travel, particiuarly that of former City Council member and mayoral candidate Orlando Sanchez. KHOU reports Sanchez traveled extensively as an at-large councilmember between 1996 and 2001, taking his creepy eyes to D.C., San Francisco, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, London, Budapest and Ploesti, Romania, and his travel expenses were routed through the mayor pro tem's office.

"There is quite a bit of travel associated with being an at-large member who chairs an international trade initiative and an international trade committee and sometimes would be requested by the mayor to represent him abroad," explained Sanchez.

He says routing travel expense reports through the mayor pro tem's office was standard, legal procedure. Sanchez points out that if he wanted to hide something, he would not have filled out public documents asking for reimbursement.

"All reimbursement requests for travel were done by forms that were filled out, signed by the councilmembers and then submitted to the pro tem's office" said Sanchez.

There is no indication that Sanchez or anyone else did anything wrong, but Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal said he wants to check out "clues and rumors" about expenses inappropriately being run through the mayor pro tem office. The travel records were apparently among those that county investigators confiscated from City Hall on Tuesday.