Taxpayers to pick up Bush’s tab

President Bush could raise $500,000 for Senate challenger George Nethercutt and briefly shine a national spotlight on Spokane today.

But it will come at a cost to local taxpayers.

The city and county will dispatch SWAT and tactical teams, fire crews and street workers – a bill that will be footed by local taxpayers.

“We don’t know at this point how much it’s going to cost,” said Marlene Feist, the city’s spokeswoman. “But we won’t get reimbursed for those costs. But there are benefits to the city for having the president come here.”

Taxpayers will also pick up a chunk of the president’s trip through Washington state because it includes an official visit with troops in Fort Lewis on Friday.

Nethercutt’s campaign will provide a partial reimbursement to the government for the trip to Spokane, but it will be a fraction of the actual costs, said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, D.C.

“It’s very small compared to the actual costs to taxpayers,” Noble said. “It saves his campaign money, but it costs the taxpayers.”

Bush will fly into Fairchild Air Force Base tonight, then travel downtown to a $1,000-a-person fund-raiser for Nethercutt, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Patty Murray. After the event, Bush will fly to Fort Lewis to talk with troops about “new threats facing our nation and the ongoing transformation of the military,” a White House official said.

With many details still a mystery and security tight, city and county officials were reluctant to speculate on the cost of Bush’s visit.

In 1986, when President Ronald Reagan campaigned for then-U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, the city was stuck with a $30,000 bill for police overtime and other expenses. Gorton’s campaign, the GOP national committee and the Secret Service denied Spokane’s requests for reimbursement for the cost of Reagan’s overnight visit.

The president’s arrival tonight will trigger a massive security operation pulling in officers from the Secret Service, state patrol, city police and county sheriff’s office.

The county’s SWAT team will help secure the route between Fairchild and downtown Spokane, said Sgt. Steve Barbieri, SWAT team supervisor. The heavily armed unit will follow the motorcade downtown to the Spokane International Agriculture Trade Center, where the city’s SWAT team will be stationed. The Washington State Patrol, county deputies and Spokane police will help secure the highways, county roads and city streets for the motorcade. They will also close off intersections so the motorcade never has to stop en route to the fund-raiser.

“Nobody knows the route,” Barbieri said. Secret Service officials “don’t want anyone to know. They don’t even tell us when he’s landing. Once (Bush) gets in the limousine, they will start to figure out which direction they will use.”

Both the city and the county will have their tactical teams – dressed in full riot gear – on standby at several locations just in case protesters get violent, Barbieri said. Unlike SWAT teams, which are trained to take down armed suspects, tactical teams are trained for crowd control.

“If things go well, and we have normal protests, you won’t even see (the officers),” Barbieri said. “It’s Spokane. We expect most people will protest peacefully. The last thing everybody wants is for Spokane to look bad.”

The Secret Service will have all local law enforcement officials assemble at noon today.

“They will tell us at a command post at about 3 p.m. if there are any threats we need to know about,” Barbieri said. “From the plan they’ve given us, it’s pretty low-key. We haven’t heard a whole lot about threats. We are expecting to see some protesters. That’s something we will watch and monitor. But it’s not something we will worry about.”

Barbieri said that if an “event” occurs, the Secret Service will move to “get the president out of danger.” The SWAT teams, on the other hand, will “make contact with the threat and resolve the incident,” he said.

In the event the president or someone else gets hurt, Deaconess Medical Center is the designated trauma hospital, Deaconess spokesman Tracy Ellig said.

Secret Service officials visited the hospital Tuesday.

“They had an advance team that came to look the place over and essentially do an advance evaluation of the hospital,” Ellig said.

Spokane police will have officers stationed throughout downtown. Police Chief Roger Bragdon estimated the department’s overtime costs for Bush’s visit will be between $6,000 and $8,000. Tonight’s visit won’t cost as much as Reagan’s trip because Bush will only be in town for a couple hours, he said.

“There are no reimbursements for presidential visits,” Bragdon said. “But I’m viewing it in a positive way. Working with the Secret Service is good training for the guys. It’s not every day that a president comes to visit.”

Cpl. Dave Reagan, spokesman for the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, said he’s asked but received no answer on personnel costs.

“It’s going to cost,” Reagan said. “But we’re not going to know until after the event.”

President Bush will fly in on Air Force One – at a cost estimated between $35,000 and $56,800 an hour.

Federal Election Commission guidelines require that campaigns reimburse the cost of a round-trip, first-class ticket for each “political” person traveling with Bush. The Fort Lewis trip allows other visitors to travel on official business, at the government’s expense, Noble said.

“Everyone else will go out under the guise of official business,” he said. “The taxpayers will pay for that.”

Taxpayers also pay the president’s security detail, whether the travel is political or official.

“The president is always the president; he has to have national security advisers with him,” said White House spokesman Ken Lisaius. But, he added, “when the president travels and there is a political event on the schedule, the government does not incur any additional costs.”

A federal formula determines how the costs are distributed between the political – paid for by the campaign – and the official travel, which is paid for by taxpayers. Nethercutt will report to the FEC in the next month on the costs reimbursed by his campaign.

“The campaign is paying for everything that the law says taxpayers don’t pay for,” said Alex Conant, a Nethercutt spokesman. “I don’t know what the cost will be, in part because the event hasn’t happened yet.”