City will pay for Nutter staffers to attend Democratic convention

Mayor Nutter heads off to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC next week, where he'll be one of the featured speakers on the program.

As always at PhillyClout, we wanted to get down to brass tacks. How much will this trip cost taxpayers?

For Nutter, nothing. His travel will be paid for by his campaign fund, as well as by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, of which he is president. But the city will be on the hook for the five staffers accompanying Nutter – mayoral aides Lauren Walker and Tumar Alexander, as well as three members of the mayor's police detail. That means airfare, hotels and meals for all those people.

Nutter's spokesman Mark McDonald declined to provide a cost estimate for the travel.

McDonald said this was an appropriate use of city funds because those staffers would be doing city work while at the political event. Back in 2008, Nutter made the same call – with the sign-off of Chief Integrity Officer Joan Markman -- to use city funds to take staffers to the Democratic Convention in Denver.