Mayor in NYC for Government Tech Summit

By City News Service

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti traveled to New York Saturday to attend a tech summit geared at improving city governance.

Garcetti was invited by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to take part in "City Lab: Urban Solutions for Global Challenges," a mayoral aide said.

He will return to Los Angeles Monday afternoon.

A couple dozen mayors are among the 300 expected attendees at the conference, being hosted by The Atlantic magazine, The Aspen Institute and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Garcetti will be accompanied by Rick Cole, the deputy mayor overseeing "budget and innovation" issues. Cole also leads a mayoral team that is developing "performance metrics" to be used for measuring the progress of each city department.

Garcetti's economic development chief, Kelli Bernard, will also attend the conference.

This would be Garcetti's second trip out of the state since becoming mayor, said his spokesman Jeff Millman.

Garcetti visited the East Cost in July. After stopping in Pittsburgh, he was set to go to Washington, D.C., for "transition-related meetings" but was forced to cut his trip short due to protests that erupted in Los Angeles following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a Florida neighborhood watch volunteer who shot teen Trayvon Martin to death during a fight inside a gated community.