PROVIDENCE — Mayors are still mulling an offer by President Obama to meet with them in Washington later this month, following the White House’s controversial decision not to send a single federal official to the annual summer meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in the face of local labor strife.

The leadership of the mayors conference discussed in a closed session Sunday morning an offer to meet with senior White House officials on June 29 to atone for nearly 100 federal officials abruptly pulling out of the conference when city firefighters threatened to stage an informational picket about their long-running contract dispute with the city.

Miami Mayor Manuel Diaz, president of the mayors organization, said after the morning meeting that a written response to the offer was being drafted. By close of the conference’s business early Sunday afternoon, however, that response was not available.

It is a decidedly cool reaction from mayors to what ostensibly is an olive branch from the White House. Obama Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett sent a letter of invitation on Thursday to a number of meeting participants, including Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline.

Mayors said it wasn’t clear whether all mayors who are attending the conference in Providence are invited to the White House or what level of interaction mayors might expect from such a meeting.

Some made it clear that a meeting for select mayors is no substitute for the unfettered access to federal departments managing the $787-billion economic stimulus package that had been expected during the four-day conference.

Michael Pizzi, mayor of Miami Lakes, Fla., said the substitute meeting shows that the Obama administration “is out of touch with reality.”

Given the economic recession and the scrutiny of public officials’ travel, it was a challenge for him just to come to Providence, let alone a makeup meeting in Washington, D.C., said Pizzi. Paying for a second trip? “Our residents just wouldn’t accept that,” he said.

Diaz said that mayors would ultimately have to weigh the benefits of a parley at the White House, which the mayors group has had with Obama officials already on a number of occasions this year, and the costs of making that trip as they seek to trim city budgets.

“This puts people in a difficult position. June 29th is just around the corner,” said Diaz. “Communities are being asked to make significant sacrifices and now to explain to constituents the need to travel again to Washington, D.C., and to foot the bill for that travel is hard.”

Cicilline said an official conference response could come in the form of a resolution that will be debated and considered on Monday, the final day of the conference.

“I’d imagine [the conference leadership] would run any response by the rest of us before sending it out,” he said.

Outside the Rhode Island Convention Center on Sunday, meanwhile, about 65 firefighters and their families and friends kept up a relatively calm protest through the morning and early afternoon.

The protesters have been picketing since the start of the conference, on Friday.

With reports from staff writer Gregory Smith

pmarcelo@projo.com