Omaha Mayor Stothert Addresses Travel Investigation Before Trip To Sicily | Politics and government

In the year Extending its journey to 2021, the Sicilian town of Carlentini is one of the final steps in cementing Omaha’s seventh sister city. Stotter plans to travel to Italy on Friday and Sept. 10. She is paying her own expenses and no taxpayer dollars were used for her trip, according to the mayor’s office.

The trip comes after weeks of repeated public concerns about the mayor’s trips abroad. Commenters on social media and elsewhere criticized Stothert, sometimes questioning her commitment to running the city.

“I’ve been (out of town) six times in 2021, and I’ve been out six times this year,” Stutter told The Herald in a phone interview Thursday.

In a record request, the World-Herald reported in July that in the first six months of 2022, Stothert was out of town 39 days, meaning she was out of town 21 percent of that time.

The World-Herald reports that members of the city’s charter convention are considering a proposal from Stuttert that would allow city mayors to remain in office while traveling outside city limits.

The current policy, which calls for the city council president to serve as acting mayor whenever the mayor leaves Omaha, is outdated, Stothert argued, especially when technology allows her or another mayor to run the city’s business while they’re out of town. Despite her reasoning, the proposal was not one of the 10 charter amendments tabled by a City Council committee.

In the year She said she spent most of her vacation in 2021 with family and friends following the death of her husband, Dr. Joe Stothert, in a suicide in March 2021.

“You have to remember that my husband killed himself in 2021,” Stutter said. “I needed some time off to spend with friends and family, and I’m sorry if that upsets people. But I had to.”

In the year Most of her time outside of Omaha in 2022 will be spent in St. Louis visiting her mother and sister, in Cincinnati to visit her son, and in Maryland with Dr. J. Stotter, whom Stutter married in May.

O’Rourke plans to travel to Sicily with Stothert, and plans to go to Omaha this fall. Like Mayor O’Reilly, he pays his own travel expenses.

Stottert and the mayor of Carlentini, Giuseppe Steffio, signed a “friendship agreement” in September 2021 in recognition of the centennial relationship between the two cities. Stottert said the purpose of the trip was to exchange ideas on art, culture, business and education with Carlentini.

Because the travel team’s travel schedule will be packed while in Carlentini, Stotter said, she will not attend the Nebraska Huskers football game in Dublin, Ireland on Aug. 27.

The trip comes nearly a month after Mayor Steffio visited Omaha to meet with Stothert and other community leaders and attend the Omaha Santa Lucia Festival.

“The bottom line: It’s diplomacy,” Stutter said.

Omaha’s trip delegation of nearly 80 includes members of the Sicula Italia Foundation, Sons of Italy, the Santa Lucia Festival Committee, the American Italian Heritage Association and the Omaha Sister Cities Association.

Italian immigrants from Carlentini, over a century old, poured into Omaha, establishing the neighborhood of Little Italy and creating a new bond in Omaha that lasts to this day.

In part because of Omaha’s large Sicilian and Italian population, the Omaha Sister Cities Association envisioned Carlentini as a new sister city.

Omaha has six existing sister cities: Yantai, China. Braunschweig, Germany; Naas, Ireland; Shizuka, Japan; Siauliai, Lithuania; and Xalapa, Mexico.