By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton called rival Barack Obama a risky choice to lead U.S. foreign policy even as Obama gained ground in the battleground U.S. states of Ohio and Texas on Monday.

With a week to go until a potentially pivotal vote in the two states on March 4, the Democratic race took on an increasingly negative tone. Clinton needs big victories there to salvage her campaign to be the Democratic nominee in the November election after losing 11 straight contests to Obama.

The Obama campaign accused the Clinton camp of “the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering” when a photograph of the Illinois senator, dressed as a Somali elder with white headdress and matching robe, turned up on the popular Drudge Report Web site.

“I think the American people are saddened when they see these kind of politics,” Obama told WOAI radio in San Antonio.

The Drudge Report said the photo was taken in 2006 during Obama’s visit to northeastern Kenya. The Democratic front-runner has fought a whispering campaign from fringe elements that say erroneously he is a Muslim.

The Web site said in an accompanying article the photo had been circulated by Clinton campaign staffers. The Clinton campaign said it had not sanctioned the photo’s release but that with 700 staffers it could not be known whether someone had sent it out unofficially.

“If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely,” Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams said.

In a foreign policy speech, Clinton said Obama had veered between pledging to meet leaders of hostile nations like Iran and Cuba if elected in November to warning of U.S. military action against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan.

“He wavers from seeming to believe that mediation and meetings without preconditions can solve the world’s intractable problems, to advocating rash, unilateral military action without cooperation from our allies in the most sensitive region of the world,” Clinton said.

A Quinnipiac University poll said Clinton led Obama in Ohio by 51 percent to 40 percent among likely Democratic voters.

That was a narrowing from the lead of 55 percent to 34 percent she held less than two weeks ago, and was a sign that Obama’s momentum was paying dividends in Ohio.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll said Obama had edged ahead of Clinton in Texas, 50 percent to 46 percent, after having been behind her narrowly last week.

‘TESTED AND READY’

Clinton’s criticism of Obama for pledging to meet leaders such as Raul Castro, who took over in Cuba from his brother Fidel Castro, was particularly biting.

“We simply cannot legitimize rogue regimes or weaken American prestige by impulsively agreeing to presidential-level talks with no preconditions. It may sound good, but it doesn’t meet the real world test of foreign policy,” she said.

Obama was unmoved. At a rally in Cincinnati, he reiterated his pledge to meet hostile foreign leaders if elected.

“We need to rediscover the power of diplomacy. So I said very early on in this campaign that I will meet not just with our friends but with our enemies, not just the leaders I like, but leaders I don’t,” he said.

Clinton said Americans took a chance on President George W. Bush, who had little foreign policy experience when elected and led the country into the unpopular Iraq war. She suggested the 46-year-old Obama was similarly inexperienced.

“We’ve seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor the wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security. We can’t let that happen again,” she said.

Clinton, who has touted her years as first lady and New York senator since 2001, used the speech to describe herself as “tested and ready” to lead U.S. foreign policy at a time of turmoil, including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries seeking nuclear weapons and challenges caused by poverty and

AIDS.

Clinton, after a fairly civil debate with Obama last Thursday in Texas during which she said she was honored to share the stage with him, has toughened her message in the past few days.

By DORIE TURNER

An iron worker and his wife said their days of living paycheck-to-paycheck were behind them after presenting the winning ticket Monday for a $275 million Mega Millions jackpot.

Robert and Tonya Harris said they also plan to replace their trailer home with a new house, and buy a new four-wheel-drive truck first thing Tuesday morning.

“I was having to work overtime to make ends meet,” said Robert Harris, who quit his job as soon as he found out his lottery ticket was a winner. “Now we don’t have to do that.”

The jackpot is the largest won by a single player in the history of the 15-year-old Georgia Lottery and the third largest in Mega Millions history, lottery officials said.

“It’s awesome,” Robert Harris, 47, told a room full of reporters after receiving the ceremonial big check from lottery officials. “We have been very blessed.”

He said he picked the winning numbers from Friday’s multistate drawing — 7, 12, 13, 19 and 22, plus the Mega Ball number 10 — by using his grandchildren’s birthdays.

Now they plan to use the windfall to send their grandchildren to college, Tonya Harris said. They also want to share some money with other relatives, she said.

“We’re not gonna change,” she said, wearing warmup pants and flip-flops. “I’m too country.”

The couple spent Sunday night at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta before arriving at the lottery headquarters to claim their prize.

Lottery officials say the couple decided to take the lump sum: $167 million before taxes. They could have chosen an annuity of $10.5 million a year for 26 years.

They bought the winning ticket at Clyde’s Market in Portal, a town of about 600 about 70 miles northwest of Savannah. Robert Harris said they play the lottery “very seldom, but something just entered my mind” to play.

He had his wife buy two $1 tickets while she was grocery shopping.

Billy Hodges, general manager of Clyde’s Market, said the news of the jackpot on Saturday morning set the town abuzz.

“It happened to a nice lady; I think this lady really deserves it,” Hodges said.

A year ago, Ed Nabors from Rocky Face, Ga., won half of a $390 million Mega Millions jackpot — the richest lottery prize in U.S. history. The other half was claimed by Elaine and Harold Messner, a couple from Cape May County in New Jersey.

Mega Millions tickets are sold in California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington state. The twice-weekly drawing is done in Atlanta.

By FRANK ELTMAN

Three young children found dead in their apartment appeared to have been drowned or poisoned, and one had her throat cut, police said Monday.

A girl, 6, and two boys, ages 5 and 1, were found dead in a bed wearing their night clothes after their mother called police early Sunday claiming she had killed them, Lt. Michael Fleming said.

“They almost looked as though they were sleeping,” he said. “It almost looked like they were cuddled up together for the night.”

The mother, Leatrice Brewer, 27, called 911, telling an operator “she killed her babies. She even spelled her name to the 911 operator,” Fleming said.

When officers arrived, she repeated the murder claim and jumped out a second-floor window of the building in a poor section of New Cassel on Long Island. Brewer, who has an arrest record dating to 2000, was hospitalized for a back injury.

It was not immediately known if she had an attorney. Her arraignment was postponed to Tuesday.

Two men who identified themselves as the children’s fathers said they had fought in vain to have them removed from Brewer’s custody.

“Whenever I tried to get my daughter, Family Court wouldn’t let me,” said Ricky Ward, the father of the girl, Jewell. “The courts wouldn’t hear me out. I blame this on Leatrice Brewer and Family Court.”

Innocent Demesyeux, the father of the two boys, told reporters he had been battling Brewer for custody for more than a year.

Relatives of Brewer saw things differently.

Neighbor Cornisha Robinson said she saw Brewer pushing an empty stroller last week and wondered where the children were.

“She neglected them,” Robinson said. “She used to leave them in the house all the time by themselves.”

“My sister’s not crazy,” said Brewer’s brother, Robert McCord. “She’s not ballistic. This is a shock to all of us.”

Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi announced a review of social services contacts with the family to determine whether anything could have been done to prevent the deaths.

“Obviously something went seriously wrong and we need to determine whether part of that wrong was with the system itself,” he said.

A medical examiner’s preliminary findings Monday confirmed that the children had likely drowned, but their exact causes of death would have to await toxicology tests, detectives said.

The killings follow other infanticide cases around the country.

Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family’s Houston bathtub in 2001 and LaShaun Harris was convicted of tossing her three young sons into San Francisco Bay in 2005. Both stood trial on murder charges but were declared legally insane.

Media advertising revenue rose 5 per cent last year to a record high, The Advertising Standards Authority said today.

The ASA said ad revenue climbed by $111 million in 2007 to $2.335 billion from $2.224 billion in 2006.

ASA executive director Hilary Souter said the 2007 figure was a new high, topping the previous record of $2.229 billion reached in 2005.

The figures incorporate ad revenue from newspapers, television, radio, magazines, outdoor, cinema, addressed mail, unaddressed mail and, for the first time, a comprehensive measurement of interactive media.

Revenue from interactive media sources comprised $135 million, or 5.8 per cent, of the annual total. Newspaper revenue led the way accounting for 35.4 per cent, or $826 million. TV was second at 28 per cent, or $654 million, with radio third with 11.7 per cent, or $274 million.

Google is tweaking its AdWords system on February 28th–launching a beta of an “automatic matching” feature that will automatically sign up advertisers to bid on keywords they haven’t bid on, SEO Fast Start reports. This new feature is presented as a benefit to advertisers–a way to get more clicks–but it’s also obviously a way to drive more revenue for Google.

SEO Fast Start hates the new tweak, arguing that it’s a trap through which Google will just suck more money out of advertisers by automatically signing them up to bid on keywords they don’t want to bid on. Other SEO experts and advertisers may have a more favorable view (if you have an opinion here, please weigh in below).

The question for investors, meanwhile, is whether this tweak should be regarded as just another “monetization and advertiser-experience improvement” change–or whether Google is flipping this switch now because the quarter is weak.

NEW YORK (AP) — Online advertising revenues exceeded $21 billion for the first time in 2007, although preliminary data compiled by an industry trade group also suggest growth is slowing.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau said its estimates show ad revenues grew 25 percent last year from nearly $17 billion in 2006. In dollar amounts, the estimated gain was $4.2 billion — less than the 35 percent and $4.3 billion growth seen in 2006 over 2005.

Analysts have said the growth rate was bound to slow as the Internet commands a larger share of the advertising pie, taking dollars away from traditional media like newspapers. By most accounts, the Internet still represents less than 10 percent of all U.S. ad spending, meaning there’s room for a lot more growth, even at a slower rate.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, which conducts a quarterly survey for the advertising trade group using data from the 15 largest online ad sellers, said fourth-quarter revenues totaled about $5.9 billion, topping the previous record of $5.2 billion in the third quarter.

David Silverman of PricewaterhouseCoopers said the latest record numbers demonstrate that interactive media continue to be important to consumers and marketers.

The IAB said final data and breakdowns by ad types would be available in May. Typically, the most lucrative are keyword ads such as those displayed alongside search results at Google Inc. and other search engines.

More Than 800 People Attend the Chamber’s 36^th Annual Awards Gala

SACRAMENTO, Calif.-OBSNews-On Saturday night in downtown Sacramento more than 800 people celebrated at an awards dinner sponsored by the Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce that was highlighted by the presentation of an impassioned keynote address by the former Treasurer of the United States, Rosario Marin. Marin, the first foreign-born individual ever to hold the Treasurer’s post, is currently serving in the administration of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as the secretary of the California State and Consumer Services Agency.

Secretary Marin’s words about empowerment and belief in the American dream of opportunity for all who are willing to work hard were well received by the resplendent crowd of business owners, politicians, labor leaders, and other community representatives. Her keynote comments about hard work, overcoming obstacles, and helping others to overcome barriers were very much in line with the focus of this year’s dinner: “Latinas, La Siguient Ola – Latinas, The Next Wave.”

One of the other women honored last night as an outstanding Latina business owner was the Chair of the Board of the Chamber, Griselda Barajas-Keolanui, owner of Griselda’s Catering and Tex-Mex Restaurant. Griselda was honored as the incoming chair of the Board of the Chamber.

Barajas-Keolanui’s restaurant recently re-opened after a forced shut-down last year because of the city’s efforts to take her landlord Moe Mohanna’s K Street properties away via eminent domain. She echoed Secretary Marin’s calls for unity, “if it weren’t for the support we receive from our fellow members of the Chamber, and my landlord and business partner Moe Mohanna, I know that I could not possibly still keep my restaurant open.”

Developer Moe Mohanna, who was also in attendance at the awards dinner, when asked about his involvement with the Tex-Mex Restaurant, said, “I am proud to have worked with the Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and its member businesses for years. I feel that my relationship with my business partner Griselda has brought me closer to the Hispanic community. As an immigrant myself, I am inspired by the words Rosario I believe ultimately the people of Sacramento believe in opportunity for all, human rights, and property rights.”

By ANITA SNOW

Cuba’s parliament named Raul Castro president on Sunday, ending nearly 50 years of rule by his brother Fidel but leaving the island’s communist system unshaken.

In a surprise move, officials bypassed younger candidates to name a 77-year-old revolutionary leader, Jose Ramon Machado, to Cuba’s No. 2 spot — apparently assuring the old guard that no significant political changes will be made soon.

The retirement of the ailing 81-year-old president caps a career in which he frustrated efforts by 10 U.S. presidents to oust him.

Raul Castro, 76, stressed that his brother remains “commander in chief” even if he is not president and proposed to consult with Fidel on all major decisions of state — a motion approved by acclamation.

Though the succession was not likely to bring a major shift in the communist government policies that have put Cuba at odds with the United States, many Cubans were hoping it would open the door to modest economic reforms that might improve their daily lives.

Raul Castro indicated at least one change is being contemplated: the revaluation of the Cuban peso, the national currency most people use to pay for government services such as utilities, public transportation and the small amount charged for their monthly food ration.

Cubans complain that government salaries averaging a little more than $19 a month do not cover basic necessities — something Raul Castro acknowledged in a major speech last year. But he said any change would have to be gradual to “prevent traumatic and incongruent effects.”

In his first speech as president, Raul Castro suggested that the Communist Party as a whole would take over the role long held by Fidel, who formally remains its leader. The new president said the nation’s sole legal party “is the directing and superior force of society and the state.”

“This conviction has particular importance when the founding and forging generation of the revolution is disappearing,” he added.

The U.S. has said the change from one Castro to another would not be significant, calling it a “transfer of authority and power from dictator to dictator light.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday Cubans have a right “to choose their leaders in democratic elections” and urged the government “to begin a process of peaceful, democratic change by releasing all political prisoners, respecting human rights, and creating a clear pathway towards free and fair elections.”

Her statement, issued shortly before parliament met, called the developments a “significant moment in Cuba’s history.”

Cuba’s parliament chose a new 31-member ruling body known as the Council of State to lead the country. The council’s president serves as the head of state and government.

The vote ended Castro’s 49 years as head of the communist state in America’s backyard. He retains his post as a lawmaker and as head of the Communist Party. But his power in government has eroded since July 31, 2006, when he announced he had undergone emergency intestinal surgery and was provisionally ceding his powers to Raul.

The younger Castro has headed Cuba’s caretaker government in the 19 months since then, and Fidel Castro has not appeared in public.

In his final essay as president, Castro wrote that preparations for the parliament meeting “left me exhausted,” and he said he did not regret his decision to step down.

“I slept better than ever,” he wrote in the commentary published on Friday. “My conscience was clear and I promised myself a vacation.”

In Old Havana, Maria Martinez, a 67-year-old retiree, watched the announcement on a Chinese-made television in her dark living room.

“He’s a trustworthy man,” she said. “He won’t make mistakes.”

“All we really want is peace and tranquility,” she added.

Her 33-year-old neighbor, Raul Rodriguez, let out a long sigh and nodded as the announcement of Raul Castro’s election was made. “He’s hard, he’s tough,” said Rodriguez, who wore an NYPD baseball cap sent by a relative in the U.S.

But a 51-year-old man hefting a wide metal tray of homemade guava and coconut pies through the streets near Havana’s train station said “this country, it’s like jail.”

“They close the doors and say ‘The president is Peter or the president is Paul’ and everyone responds ‘Good, it’s Peter or Paul.’ There’s no openness,” said the man named Isidro, who like many Cubans declined to give his last name to a foreign journalist when criticizing the government.

Machado, the new No. 2, fought alongside the Castro brothers in the Sierra Maestra during the late 1950s and is a key Communist Party ideologue.

Cuba’s young guard apparently will have to wait a little longer. Cabinet secretary Carlos Lage, 56, who is associated with the modest economic reforms of the 1990s, had been among the most visible Cuban officials since Fidel Castro fell ill and was considered a strong candidate to replace Raul as first vice president.

Machado and Lage were joined by four other vice presidents: Juan Almeida Bosque, 80, a historic revolutionary leader; Interior Minister Abelardo Colome Ibarra, 68; Esteban Lazo Hernandez, 63, a longtime Communist Party leader, and Gen. Julio Casas Regueiro, 71, Raul Castro’s No. 2 at the Defense Ministry.

The council secretary remained Dr. Jose M. Miyar Barrueco, 75, physician and historic revolutionary leader, and longtime aide to Fidel Castro.

Fidel was among the 614 members of parliament elected on Jan. 20 but his seat was empty at Sunday’s gathering. As the names of the new National Assembly’s members were read aloud, mention of the absent Castro drew a standing ovation. Parliament gave another standing ovation to Raul. The session closed with shouts of “Viva Fidel!”

In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez reaffirmed his economic and political support of Cuba when he took a telephone call from Raul Castro after the session. Chavez also sent a message to his ally Fidel, whom he visited numerous times during his illness.

“Fidel, comrade,” Chavez said, “I send you a hug. You continue to be El Comandante.”

Earlier Sunday, Chavez scoffed at the idea of a transition in Cuba, saying “the transition occurred 49 years ago,” from U.S.-dominated capitalism to socialism.

Sites Redfin, TheHomeBuyingCenter, Zillow, Trulia, all cite good traffic

Talk about an uh-oh moment.

It was late October, and Redfin, an online real estate brokerage in Seattle, had received just three months earlier a $12 million investment led by the marquee venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

In the interim, the mortgage industry melted down, foreclosures soared and housing sales slowed to a crawl. Then one of Redfin’s biggest markets, Los Angeles, was battling a series of wildfires and Redfin’s sales had stopped cold.

Redfin was not the only victim of bad timing. Venture capitalists poured about $50 million into three other real estate Web sites last year - Zillow, Terabitz and Trulia - only to watch the market enter a historic slide.

Now, although most of the real estate industry wishes it could fast-forward through 2008, these online startups are surviving nicely. Each company recently reported strong sales and increases in Web traffic. Trulia jumped to the top by the end of 2007, from sixth place in 2006, according to Nielsen Online.

Although these sites are not growing as quickly as they might have during a bullish market, they are at least growing.

“In September, we thought it was maybe the beginning of a very long downturn,” said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s chief executive. “But for whatever reason, the last few months have been very strong for us.”

Executives of Trulia, Zillow and Terabitz said they, too, were encouraged by recent results. Online real estate companies, they added, could be today’s version of the online travel agencies that flourished after the Sept. 11 attacks: A cheap alternative for suppliers looking to market a product that is suddenly in low demand.

In this case, brokers and agents have seen their marketing budgets shrink in lockstep with their commissions as they struggle to sell homes.

“There’s no doubt that a lot of brokers are feeling some pain right now,” said Pete Flint, chief executive of Trulia, a real estate search service in San Francisco. “They’re spending less on advertising than they were, but they’re spending a significantly larger portion online, because it’s cheaper, and it’s where the audience is.”

Flint would not disclose sales figures, but he said traffic was growing more than 10 percent monthly, “and revenues are growing much faster than that.”

Redfin is a slightly different story because it does not accept advertising from brokers and agents. Rather, the site competes with traditional brokerages to offer people a way to buy and sell homes without face-to-face contact with an agent.

Buyers and sellers communicate with Redfin’s agents - in effect, customer service representatives on the Web - by phone and through e-mail to negotiate deals and arrange house visits, among other things. Customers pay far lower fees to Redfin than they would pay to traditional agents.

With home sales slowing, Kelman said that “we had to get very serious about figuring out what works and what doesn’t for sellers.” The company’s analysts pored through sales data and found that, among other things, listings that make their debuts on Fridays draw 7.7 percent more visitors than those introduced on Thursdays. In addition, listings priced at $351,001 receive significantly less attention online than those listed at $350,000, because of how real estate search engines filter their results.

The company began disseminating such tips to clients in December, around the same time Redfin’s results began improving. Since late September, the site’s share of real estate sales in which Redfin represented the buyer rose by 23 percent in Seattle, to nearly 2.5 percent, and jumped by 176 percent in the San Francisco area, to nearly 1 percent.

Zillow, which in September raised $30 million from Legg Mason Capital Management and others, attracted 20 percent more visitors in December 2007 than in December 2006, according to Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s chief financial officer.

“Our growth actually accelerated in the back half of the year,” he said. “In a down market, buyers, sellers and agents need more tools.”

The advertising revenue that Zillow generates for every 1,000 pages on its site has more than doubled from a year ago, Rascoff said, as the site has added more sales agents and advertising products that allow marketers to reach homeowners at specific addresses. (People wishing to see Zillow’s appraisal of a home type in the address).

Terabitz, which raised $10 million from Tudor Capital in July, builds and maintains online portals for real estate brokers and agents. The business only began selling its services in September, but Ashfaq Munshi, Terabitz’s chief executive, said he was pleased with the progress. The company introduced its first six brokerage sites this month, including that of Century 21 Abrams, Hutchinson and Associates, www.century21ah.com, which serves Middlesex and Mercer counties in New Jersey.

Whether the success of the newcomers will spread to more established sites is an open question, said Kenneth Cassar, an analyst with Nielsen Online. “There’s dichotomy with what’s going on in this category, when it comes to visitors and advertisers,” he said. While the number of visitors is up, the number of ads run on real estate sites dropped 31 percent last year when compared with 2006.

In past years, Cassar said, consumers who visited these sites were usually in the market for a house, a new mortgage or goods to help them complete a remodeling. “Today, they want to understand the impact of the broader market on their local market,” he said. And as consumers find mostly bad news on that front, they are not exactly great targets for marketers who want to sell them new couches, new homes or a new mortgage.

“But people still need to live someplace and move from time to time,” Cassar said. “So there will be a consistent base of activity that’ll keep a number of these players quite happy.”

Far-flung trips called unneeded, unfruitful

By Terri Hardy

As part of her quest to make Sacramento the greenest city in the country, Mayor Heather Fargo has seen the world, traveling to London, Alaska, Paris and other far-flung locations to study the impacts of global warming.

Since October 2005, she’s traveled nearly 124,000 miles on 25 trips – 20 of them to climate change conferences or meetings where the environment was prominent on the agendas, city records show.

Though many of those miles were traveled in the name of conservation, Fargo’s journeys created about 25 tons of carbon emissions, based on Sacramento Municipal Utility District estimates – only a small portion of which were offset by sponsoring organizations.

And while Fargo said she sought out sponsored trips, the travel nonetheless cost taxpayers at least $44,000, for Fargo and occasionally for accompanying city staff members. It took Fargo out of Sacramento 135 days, causing her to miss 16 of 113 council meetings – 14 percent.

Some environmental experts question the necessity for journeying so far afield. And while some of Fargo’s peers say she’s emerged as a leader in the push toward a more environmentally conscious Sacramento, local environmentalists complain that Fargo hasn’t shared innovative ideas culled from her trips and has failed to show leadership on some key local environmental and land use decisions.

Graham Brownstein, executive director of the Environmental Council of Sacramento, said disillusionment among local environmentalists grew after the mayor’s recent State of the Downtown address on greening the central city. In her comments, Fargo advised citizens to lower their carbon emissions by walking more and getting rid of incandescent light bulbs.

“She seemed so completely detached about the reality of the scope of challenges we face with global warming, that it was almost beyond comprehension,” Brownstein said. “Is that all she learned at those conferences? What else is there other than light bulbs?”

Fargo said her trips have resulted in important local environmental advances, including the creation of a city blueprint to cut energy use and greenhouse gases, called the Sustainability Master Plan.

And she said the conferences have allowed her to gather information, fight for funds and advocate on important issues, such as flood control and eminent domain. They also allow her to make and maintain relationships and raise her profile, she said, including on environmental issues.

“When I evaluate whether or not to travel, I look at what’s good for the city and whether there’s a benefit that makes sense, both in (terms of) my time and city resources,” Fargo said. “I meet other mayors and talk about what cities need to do and can do.”

City Councilman Ray Tretheway and West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon both said Fargo has emerged as a leader at civic conferences. She’s the incoming president of the League of California Cities, for instance, and a member of the advisory board for the U.S Conference of Mayors.

“She rolls up her sleeves, puts down her purse and goes to work,” Cabaldon said, who himself has traveled abroad only once in his seven years as West Sacramento’s part-time mayor. “Other mayors make a quick speech, do a press conference and they’re nowhere to be seen. If you go to Washington, D.C., you won’t find (Fargo) at the local club or bar.”

Tourism benefits cited

For two months, The Bee has conducted dozens of interviews and analyzed hundreds of documents, most obtained through a Public Records Act request, to put together a list of where Fargo goes and what those trips have contributed to the city.

Fargo said one of her most important criteria in evaluating a potential trip is who foots the bill. She noted costs for her journeys to Israel, London, Paris, Japan and two trips to China were largely covered by other organizations, sparing the city the cost.

For her China trip in 2005, for instance, the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau paid $3,300 and considered it a good marketing opportunity, bureau officials said.

Fargo’s tasks were few on that 17-day trip: an embassy briefing, two formal dinners and a five-minute speech during a sister-city tourism forum, according to travel documents obtained from the city. The itinerary shows that most of the trip was devoted to sightseeing.

However, Fargo said such trips are a useful way to make connections with other officials, promote tourism and bring back ideas for economic development. While in Matsuyuma, Japan, in 2006, she said she met with dignitaries to help pave the way for a large delegation of Miki Prune Co. workers to include Sacramento on their planned trip to the United States in 2009.

She took along a city staff member on 12 of the trips, causing expenses to increase. While Fargo’s city expenses on the Japan trip were just $615, for instance, it cost taxpayers an additional $5,103 for her special assistant Chuck Dalldorf to accompany her.

The city payments for portions of Fargo’s travel ranged from her per diem of at least $39 for food and incidentals any day she is out of the city to her three nights in a $399 room at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel for a June 2006 U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting. Sue O’Brien, her other special assistant, went along on that Las Vegas trip, and taxpayers paid the $1,900 bill for her.

In addition, a reserve city police officer chauffeured Fargo to and from the airport on several trips, and to and from overnight trips in Berkeley and Monterey, at an additional cost to taxpayers of $34 an hour.

Clash over Greenbriar

Christina Lokke, policy advocate for the taxpayer watchdog group Common Cause, said the extent of Fargo’s travel raises broader questions than expense alone.

“Why is it necessary for the mayor to travel all over the world?” Lokke said. “It’s important to remain knowledgeable, but it’s more important to be available and responsible.”

Because the mayor determines the council meeting agendas, Fargo said she doesn’t schedule important items while she’s away. Yet when Fargo recently traveled to an environmental conference in Washington, D.C., she did miss the first public discussion on the city’s worsening budget crisis.

City officials last year also said negotiations with downtown landlord Moe Mohanna over the fate of blighted sections of K Street were delayed because Fargo left town. And in 2006, when it looked as if the deal to develop the downtown railyard was falling apart, Fargo was unreachable while in Japan on a cultural sister city trip, Tretheway confirmed. Tretheway said he and City Councilman Rob Fong participated in an emergency conference call aimed at keeping the railyard plan alive.

Recently, while Fargo traveled to a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, D.C., she missed an important hearing on the controversial proposal to annex farmland and open up Natomas to a development known as Greenbriar.

When a pivotal vote on whether to move forward on the Greenbriar plan came up the following week, Fargo voted for the plan, stipulating that construction could not begin until the federal government certifies levees in the area provide 100-year flood protection.

Critics vehemently opposed the vote, citing sprawl, flooding, close proximity of homes to freeways, and fewer dollars to fund promised improvements in already-incorporated areas of Natomas.

“It was like getting splashed with cold water in your face,” said Jude Lamare, president of Friends of the Swainson’s Hawk environmental group. “Fargo does a lot of green talk and points to how advanced Sacramento is, but when it comes to making the biggest land use decision she can make, she sides with the developers.”

Away from home, however, Fargo maintains a solid reputation as an environmental leader.

“She’s praised for her work on transportation and land use in her community,” said Tom Cochran, executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, whose conferences, along with those of the League of California Cities, were destinations for half of Fargo’s journeys.

While at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Fargo has sponsored one environmental resolution, according to documents supplied by the mayor’s office. That resolution, “Endorsing Federal Policies to Increase Residential Energy Efficiency Using Strategically Planted Trees,” was adopted last year.

Fargo’s office, in a written response, said the city hasn’t adopted anything of its own along those lines. The response continued: “The mayor sponsored this as an individual committed to protecting the environment.”

Travel choices questioned

Fargo’s travel documents show the mayor, who has said climate protection should be the city’s No. 1 priority, has been drawn to global warming events over the last two years.

But when her global destinations – Paris, Alaska, London and China – were shown to three experts in climate control and green building practices at the University of California campuses in Davis and Berkeley, they couldn’t explain the choices. They said if Fargo’s goal was to look at cutting-edge programs or gather best practices, much of her travel could have been limited to the West Coast, even the Bay Area.

“She certainly doesn’t need to go far,” said Stephen Wheeler, an assistant professor at UC Davis who teaches courses on regional planning, urban design and sustainable development. Wheeler also has written two books on sustainability.

Other cities known for their leadership on green issues are New York City, Chicago and Austin, Texas, said Jim Pierobon, spokesman for the American Council on Renewable Energy.

Fargo said she has visited some of those locations, too, including attending a Seattle Climate Summit in 2007, taking a trip to Chicago in early 2005 to look at energy-saving roofs and traveling to Berkeley, a city with a long history of environmental stewardship, to attend a three-day executive board meeting for the League of California Cities.

Fargo’s latest international journey was an eight-day trip in December to the Water Sector Summit in France.

“Paris is someplace I’ve always wanted to go, I must say,” Fargo said. She said she accepted the invitation when “they said they would be paying.” (Fargo’s husband, Alan Moll, went along on that trip as he did on four others, but the mayor’s office said he paid his own way.)

The trip, sponsored by the French Embassy, was billed as an event focusing on water, but also addressing issues including climate change and air quality. It featured a stop at a water treatment plant, a tour of the French Senate, dinner with Paris’ mayor and an “Evening in Paris” at a hotel on the Place des Pyramides.

No presentations were required, but mayors were alerted “to be prepared to discuss the environmental challenges facing your city,” according to conference documents.

Challenges discussed at the summit, Fargo said, included how to persuade citizens to use tap water instead of bottled water. Also discussed, she said, were coping with flood control and facilitating bicycle rentals.

‘Political vision’ praised

As part of The Bee’s Public Records Act request, Fargo was asked to provide a copy of all city memos, reports, resolutions or legislation that resulted from the conferences she attended.

The most significant environmental actions Fargo produced were the city’s 17-page Sustainability Master Plan and a plan to promote the use of renewable building materials. Both documents were approved by the City Council in December.

Neither Fargo, nor city staff members, showed that information gleaned from Fargo’s travels was given to the city employees creating the environmental program documents.

Rhea Serran, a spokeswoman for the city’s General Services Department, which oversaw creation of the master plan, said the committee putting together the document had its first contact with Fargo when the report was in draft form, on the day it was presented to the City Council in April.

Reina Schwartz, director of General Services, said Fargo did provide brief summaries of her trips at council meetings and staff meetings. And she said Fargo has worked at the U.S. Conference of Mayors to create a federal community block grant program for energy and environmental purposes that could bring money to Sacramento.

“The political vision of the importance of sustainability and the direction, that’s what the mayor’s providing,” Schwartz said. “She’s not developing individual programs; she’s setting policy.”

Jamie Cutlip, the city planner who wrote the green building program proposal, also said the mayor’s office had not provided her with any documents. When she briefed Fargo before the meeting, she said, Fargo didn’t offer any suggestions either.

“I met with the mayor and the council members and they said we were on track,” Cutlip said. “Everyone was supportive; they didn’t have any suggested changes.”

Cutlip and Serran said putting together the documents involved staff analyzing cutting-edge practices in cities like Chicago, Austin, Seattle and New York. Schwartz, the General Services director, traveled to Seattle with the mayor while developing the master plan, Serran said. Cutlip said she went only as far as the Bay Area.

Most of the research, Serran and Cutlip said, was done in the office, on the phone and the Internet.