Tuesday, October 10, 2000 2 must go at Visitors Bureau   By Tom Hennessy Staff columnist "Every business in Long Beach benefits from a strong convention and hospitality industry."—Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau. If the above is true, then it must also be true that businesses get hurt when the convention and hospitality industry somehow goes awry. The convention bureau is the motor that drives that industry. And it has gone dreadfully awry via incorrect bookkeeping caused by inefficiency or dishonesty misfeasance or malfeasance. "We know we've got a problem," the bureau's new board chairman, Chris Pook, said last week. "And we are going to fix the problem." However well-intentioned, his statement is not enough. A promise of future reforms is hardly a formula for restoring public confidence in the bureau. In fact, such minimal measures have the flavor of an in-house effort aimed at protecting those who are at fault. Let's review As is now well-known, the incorrect figures had the effect of inflating convention bureau sales records. This enabled several individuals to collect incentive bonuses that, in truth, had not been earned. (Oddly, none of these "mistakes" - if, indeed, they were mistakes - had the effect of deflating sales records.) Pook has been quoted as saying there is "every reason to believe this was done with good intent. There's no malfeasance." But according to a former bureau employee, the records were deliberately falsified to achieve sales quotas. "Any business would terminate its upper management staff in a heartbeat were similar situations to be found in its midst," says a friend of mine, a businessman who has kept a close eye on this story. He is right. In fact, there is only one sure way to salvage the CVB's integrity and safeguard its nonprofit status: that is through the departure, voluntary or otherwise, of CEO Linda Howell DiMario and the agency's vice president of sales, Tom Dorsett. Anything less than that is equivocation. The industry said to be vital to city businesses is bigger than any individual, even Howell DiMario, whom I have known as a public official and a friend. She has compiled an impressive record. Whatever problems have surfaced here, the city's annual 4.5 million visitors and more than a quarter billion convention dollars a year in economic benefits (CVB's figures) are a substantial base for making her an attractive hire in another city. Other question Another disturbing element is that the irregularities in the bureau were so slow to be unraveled. They began to unfold last spring, but bureau officials, including Howell DiMario, let months go by without taking substantial action. Even now, there are many officials, especially on the City Council, whose silence or near silence re this affair has been deafening. With no official outrage, cynics will speculate that the foxes, indeed, are guarding the hen house. Recently, some activists have called for establishment of a city ethics commission to make judgments, advisory or otherwise, when matters of government integrity arise. The Convention Bureau mess calls out for exactly that. Tom Hennessy's viewpoint appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He can be reached at (562) 499-1270, or via e-mail at Scribe17@aol.com