UPDATE: On January 18, The Beat learned that Councilmember Hon Lien had to cancel her D.C. trip, as there were no more hotel rooms to book in the area.
During this long holiday weekend, three members of the Milpitas City Council are visiting Washington, D.C.
Two of them – Mayor Carmen Montano and Councilmember Evelyn Chua – are currently attending the United States Conference of Mayors’ 93rd Winter Meeting, where President Joe Biden was in attendance earlier today.
The conference, held from January 17-19, is an opportunity for elected officials to meet with federal officials and congressional leaders. Committees within the conference also formulate policy positions that represent the ideas of mayors across the nation; these positions are then sent to the U.S. President and Congress.
The third councilmember – Hon Lien – is traveling to D.C. this weekend to take meetings with various government representatives.
But there is a notable backstory behind these D.C. trips…
The Backstory
Last week, at the January 7 Milpitas City Council meeting, the Council approved for Mayor Carmen Montano and Councilmember Evelyn Chua to attend the mayors’ conference. However, the majority of the Council voted not to allow Councilmember Hon Lien to also attend.
Milpitas has a Travel and Expense Policy that requires the City Council to approve all travel for elected officials and the City Manager. Every year, each member of the Milpitas City Council has an allocation of $10,000 to attend conferences and meetings, and also enroll in memberships.
Councilmember Lien presently has a balance of $9,875 remaining in her allocation.
The total cost for attending the conference in D.C. is $5,000, between the registration fee, transportation, lodging, and meals.
At the meeting, though, Mayor Montano did not hesitate to express her disapproval of Councilmember Lien attending:
“I do not agree with this request with due respect, because there will be three councilmembers going, and there’s going to be a majority. It’s also the distance, all the way across the United States,” said Mayor Montano.
She also brought up the possibility of violating the Brown Act due to the fact that a majority of Council would be at the conference.
Vice Mayor Garry Barbadillo asked the City Attorney if there would be a possible Brown Act violation issue by way of Lien attending. The City Attorney said that there wasn’t, so long as the trio didn’t discuss matters that pertain to the City Council outside of the regular agenda.
“On my one vote, I believe that any opportunity that would better each and every one of us, regardless, and bring it back to the city would be a good opportunity. So I’m fine with Councilmember Lien going,” said Vice Mayor Barbadillo.
However, the Vice Mayor’s vote was not enough, with the majority – Mayor Montano, Councilmember Chua, and Councilmember William Lam – all voting against Councilmember Lien’s participation.
“This is training, it’s a conference, it’s related to the City and within my budget. So I don’t see why I cannot go,” expressed Lien at the meeting.
In explaining her main reason for not allowing Councilmember Lien’s request, Mayor Montano said, “The superseding argument is that it’s all the way across the country. What if the plane crashes? Three councilmembers…you just have to be prudent. I don’t know, the weather. You just have to be prudent.”
Speechless and Disappointed
The Beat reached out to Montano for a comment and she wrote back by text: “The D.C. trip is intended for mayors across the United States. As far as I can remember, only the mayors went. Former Mayor Rich Tran allowed his vice mayors to attend with him. He set a new trend.”
In a Facebook post following last Tuesday’s council meeting, Rich Tran wrote:
“Every elected official in City Hall should have the right to attend conferences – no matter what. During my time as Mayor, I was never prohibited from attending conferences for any reason. We must do all we can do to support each member on the council to be the best they can be for Milpitas regardless of our differences.”
Although Councilmember Chua is no longer the vice mayor this year, she had been unable to attend the conference last year due to a family health situation. But this year, she wanted to attend, since she’d missed out before.
“[Evelyn Chua] had the decency and respect to ask if she could attend with me. Hon Lien had staff make arrangements to go without my knowledge,” added Mayor Montano. “Staff put it on the agenda and the Council majority voted ‘no’ because it is too much of a risk to have three members go, especially if it’s clear across the country.”
When The Beat reached out to Lien to ask how she felt about her colleagues’ decision, she responded with two words: “Speechless. Disappointed.”
Where Things Stand Now – and the Presidential Inauguration
Even though the majority of the council did not rule in her favor, Councilmember Lien was not about to let that stop her. In the end, she booked her own flight and paid her own way to D.C. Although she will not be attending the mayors conference itself, she will be present on the ground to take some meetings.
Lien feels that being in D.C. offers her valuable and educational opportunities that can be used to the benefit of Milpitas. For instance, in March of 2024, Councilmember Lien attended a different conference in Washington, D.C. There, Lien met a lobbyist who was able to make appointments with her to visit various government representatives. While doing so, she learned that there were federal funds available to be allocated toward city infrastructure. Lien informed The Beat that she passed this information on to the Milpitas City Staff, and they were able to apply for and get awarded a $2.9 million grant to be put toward pedestrian safety and car crash reductions near Milpitas schools.
The three Milpitas councilmembers who are in D.C. this weekend also have tickets to attend Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on Monday, January 20. Congressman Ro Khanna’s office had given tickets to Chua and Montano, while Lien received her inauguration ticket from a lobbyist last March during her last D.C. visit.
Over text, Mayor Montano told The Beat that she decided she would not be attending the inauguration.
But Lien told The Beat: “I’m going to the inauguration, not because of who is president, but because I’m an immigrant who came to this country. And it has always been my dream to attend the peaceful transfer of power in the United States.”
While I agree with Council member Lien about the value of our elected representatives attending the United States Conference of Mayors’ 93rd Winter Meeting, I strongly object to their presence at the inauguration of the felon president who’s an adjudicated rapist and (according to Jack Smith) clearly an insurrectionist that tried to overthrow our government. Remember that the E. Jean Carrol case was not about rape, but suppressing the information about Trump being a rapist so he could get elected in 2016. That is election fraud! Anyone treating the felon president as normal is disconnected from reality.
You could use the same argument to pardon Trump as Biden used to pardon his son:“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of (Trump’s) cases can reach any other conclusion than (Trump) was singled out only because he is (hated} — and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break (Trump) even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break (Trump), they’ve tried to break (The American People) — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.” The voters have spoken. None of what you say matters. Even with all that he beat Kamala.