Mayor’s travel bill:

Tab defended as necessary to bring in business, grants. Meetings raise Atlanta’s profile, he says.

Kasim Reed’s foreign and domestic travel cost taxpayers about $36,340 from January 2011 through March 2012. He says travel has long been an essential part of making Atlanta the hub of the Southeast.

One of the first people to step off an arriving flight at the new international terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.

Reed wasn’t in town for the terminal’s May 16 opening because he had gone to Paris over the weekend for his fifth international trip as mayor — this one, a conference on urban planning.

Reed’s foreign and domestic travel has cost taxpayers about $36,340 from January 2011 through March 2012, according to expense reports obtained through an open records request. Travel costs for Reed’s staff totaled nearly $27,000 in that period, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s calculations.

Reed says travel is an essential part of the job of making Atlanta the hub of the Southeast, and has been since before Andrew Young crisscrossed the globe to help snatch the 1996 Olympics for the city. He points to federal grants, such as $47 million for the Atlanta streetcar, as proof his travel is paying off.

“I want Atlanta to be top of mind,” he said. “It places the city at the center of national conversations, which is where I believe we should be. I would really hang our hat on our results.”

The first-term mayor’s globe-trotting has included trips to London and Amsterdam, a trade mission this year to China and two journeys to Paris since he took office in January 2010. The international travel covered 20 business days.

Reed has made domestic