Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman on Monday criticized council members Juan Marcano and Crystal Murillo for attending a conference in Paris using taxpayer dollars.

“For Aurora city council members to be attending a conference, in Paris of all places, is an insult to the hardworking taxpayers of this city,” Coffman wrote in a tweet. “This morning, I will be putting in a request to City Manager Jim Twombly for a complete breakdown of their expenses.”

Coffman also said he would introduce a proposal prohibiting council members from “ever again using tax dollars to pay for a trip to an international conference.”

City staff said Marcano and Murillo attended the International Making Cities Livable conference, which is held in different cities around the world each year. Last year, the conference was in Carmel, Indiana – an Indianapolis suburb – and both Marcano and Murillo attended.

Each council member is allotted $7,000 to travel for conferences and professional development each year, and the mayor is allotted $11,000 for travel. Marcano said the conference was in the Paris suburb Le Plessis-Robinson. 

“Each council member has discretion to use their travel budget in accordance with the policy,” Aurora spokesperson Ryan Luby said in a statement.

Travel money that council members do not use accumulates every year they remain on council, so some have higher balances than others.

Luby said Murillo spent $5,535 on the trip to France and Marcano spent $3,050. 

Marcano said he planned to share information about the conference in France at a council meeting in August, but he will now do so at a meeting in June to clear up what he said was disinformation. While in France, Marcano said he met with the regional Chamber of Commerce to sell Aurora as an international city and business destination. 

“The mayor continues to live down to my worst expectations. This is just really cynical,” Marcano said of Coffman’s tweet.

Last year, Marcano said he, Coffman and council member Alison Coombs went on a delegation trip to visit Aurora’s sister city in El Salvador. He added that in June, the mayor and other council members are going on an Accelerate Colorado trip to Washington, D.C., which Marcano called “a literal two-day junket to D.C. where they’re gonna get wined and dined by lobbyists.” 

Council members Dustin Zvonek, Steve Sundberg, Angela Lawson and Danielle Jurinsky each have budgeted $3,500 for the trip to Washington. Coffman has spent nothing so far and has nothing budgeted, according to city records. 

Marcano said people who attended the conference in France learned about best municipal practices and reviewed case studies on development, public health, environmental issues and how to make cities livable.

“I think that there’s a lot of opportunity there to learn from folks who are actually doing the work both domestically and abroad, and that’s why I think this is a really valuable conference,” Marcano said. “… I’m hoping that folks attend the meeting that we’re going to have in early June, basically doing a debrief of what we covered at the conference.”

Murillo said “it’s a shame” that the Mayor “has tried to weaponize a fund that helps us be better public servants,” noting that all council members but one have used their travel funds. 

“I take our taxpayers’ dollars seriously,” Murillo said in an email. “These conferences are incredible opportunities to learn. I learned a lot and am excited about sharing that with council, the people of Ward 1, and putting this information to work.”

Coffman told The Denver Gazette that he was never made aware of the trip to France.

While the trip was allowed under city rules, he said it was inappropriate “to take what I feel was a European vacation on taxpayers’ expense.”

“I think it’s just very unfortunate,” Coffman said. “I think the optics are not good for the city, and I want to put forward a proposal that would prohibit anybody from ever doing that again.”

He’s working on a draft policy now and said it could come to a vote in about four weeks. But he said he wouldn’t seek to prevent international travel requested by the city, which can come from the Office of International and Immigrant Affairs or one of Aurora’s sister cities. 

Coffman also wasn’t aware that the council members attended the same conference in Indiana last year.

“We’re locally elected officials and I don’t think we have any business going to international conferences,” Coffman said. “I think it’s amazing what you can find out online and from livestream programs and just what you can learn from the people in the city.”