You will see members of city councils, school baords, superintendants and every other thing going to “conferences” and such on taxpayer dime all the time.
It’s insidious.
Recently members of the Dallas (or Fort Worth?) school board went to Colorado to “check out” things before they hired a new school chief. He being the only nominee.
The city of Vancouver, WA had conferences for different departments some years back when the economy was good, they'd be in other parts of the state and be for 2 or 3 days.
When times got tough they were one of the first things to go. Now they've been laying off a lot of people. If they can do without conferences now they could have gotten along fine without them then.