Expense tabs for 8 in ’10 top $50,000

$4.7 million paid to state legislators

— With Randy Laverty getting the most, eight state lawmakers each collected more than $50,000 in per diem, mileage and expense payments last year.

A Democrat from Jasper, Laverty’s been a senator since 2003 and was in the House of Representatives from 1995-2001.

Last year he collected $59,745, including $9,777 to attend out-of-state conferences, records show.

Per diem (a daily allowance for lodging, meals and incidentals), mileage and expense payments are in addition to legislator salaries, which were $15,869 each, except for the House speaker and Senate president pro tempore, who received $17,771 each.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette compiled the figures from records of the Bureau of Legislative Research, the Legislative Audit Division, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.

The payments for lawmakers (100 seats in the House, 35 in the Senate) totaled $4.7 million, up from $4.4 million in 2008, the last year in which, like 2010, there wasn’t a “regular” legislative session. They were $3.6 million in 2006.

Last year was the first in which lawmakers held a fiscal session, authorized when voters in 2008 approved Amendment 88.

These payments typically add up to more in the years in which the Legislature meets in a regular session (these are in the odd-numbered years). The payments were $5.4 million in 2009, $4.7 million in 2007, $3.9 million in 2005.

In 2007, Act 288 increased office expense allowances and the amount of money that legislators who live within 50 miles of the Capitol may receive in lieu of per diem and mileage. It was estimated this would raise expenses $850,000 a year.

Usually, lawmakers who draw the most attend more meetings, live farther from Little Rock, and go to more out-of-state conferences. The eight who drew more than $50,000 have some of the longest trips from home to Little Rock and back.

Most legislative committee meetings are in Little Rock, but not all.

Committees met elsewhere on about 40 days in 2010, including in Benton, Bentonville, Blytheville, Camden, Columbus, Eureka Springs, Fayetteville, Forrest City, Fort Smith, Harrison, Hope, Hot Springs, Lake Bull Shoals, Mena, Monticello, Pocahontas, Rogers, Searcy, Stuttgart, Warren and Wrightsville, according to the General Assembly’s website.

Legislators who don’t live within 50 miles of the Capitol are eligible for per diem of $149 per day for attending legislative meetings in Little Rock, $147 per day for Hot Springs, and $123 per day for other Arkansas cities, said Margie Davis, fiscal officer for the Bureau of Legislative Research.

Through Sept. 30, 2010, the rates were $149 for Little Rock, $148 for Hot Springs and $116 for other Arkansas cities, she said.

The mileage reimbursement rate now is 51 cents per mile round trip, up from 50 cents last year, she said.

Some legislators grumble privately that some colleagues sign in at committee meetings to be paid per diem for “attending” the meetings but stay only briefly, or attend too many out-of-state gatherings unnecessarily at taxpayer expense.

POLITICAL ISSUE

The past few years, some lawmakers who have drawn among the largest amounts have been targeted for it by political opponents.

In the 2010 Democratic primary for land commissioner, one candidate, then state Rep. Monty Davenport of Yellville, was the subject of a website that cited his drawing $52,047 in 2009. L.J. Bryant of Newport, who won the nomination, denied he had anything to do with the site. He lost in November to Republican John Thurston of Bigelow.

But in November, GOP secretary of state nominee Mark Martin defeated the Democratic nominee, Pulaski County Clerk Pat O’Brien, even though O’Brien criticized Martin for receiving $56,290 in addition to his legislative salary of $15,615 in 2009. Martin countered that those payments largely stemmed from the fact that he lives far from Little Rock, in Prairie Grove.

LAVERTY

Laverty said he was surprised that he collected the most last year.

He said he attended meetings of the Energy Council in Newfoundland, Canada, in June; Biloxi, Miss., in September; and Santa Fe, N.M., in December, having become the group’s vice chairman last September (he’s in line to be chairman). He also attended meetings of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Washington, D.C., in April and the Southern Legislative Conference in Charleston, S.C., in July.

“Any conference you go to you’ve got to ask yourself first of all ‘Why am I am going to a conference?’” he said in an interview. “If it’s just to be going on a trip, then I don’t have time for that. But if it is something where I can learn, if it’s going to help me in my capacity as a public servant, then I would consider it if I can get away from work and the usual grind.”

Formed in 1975, the Energy Council is a consortium of energy-producing states, several Canadian provinces and Venezuela. It holds meetings aimed at getting lawmakers up to speed on energy issues. Laverty said the meetings are some of the most informative he’s attended about energy policy and its agricultural aspects.

“I didn’t realize that shellfish or the fish in the Gulf were safe, very safe [and] they weren’t impacted by the spill [in the Gulf of Mexico], and that was something that I didn’t know,” said Laverty, who is barred from running for re-election in 2012 under the state’s term-limits amendment.

“Now what benefit is that to my people in my district? I guess what benefit is a college degree, really? Well, it is a benchmark of something you have accomplished in the state, and as a state senator I’ve tried to become the best informed I can possibly be,” Laverty said.

Laverty, vice chairman of the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee, said he attended the National Conference of State Legislatures conference in Washington for briefings at the White House about the new federal health-care law.

“Some decisions we make in the next two years are going to decide how prepared we are for the spinoff effects of the new health-care system,” he said.

Laverty said he re-immersed himself in legislative matters after recovering from a liver transplant in July 2009.

As co-chairman of the Legislative Facilities Committee, he collected per diem of $149 a day for meeting with committee staff on eight days and for actual committee meetings on three others, records show. He was paid $436.50 in mileage for meetings with staff and $267.75 for committee meetings.

The other co-chairman, state Rep. Eddie Cooper, DMelbourne, collected per diem for 10 meetings with staff and one committee meeting, according to the records. He collected $675 in mileage for meetings with staff and $67.50 for the committee meeting.

It’s unusual for a committee chairman to collect for more days meeting with staff than the committee’s meetings.

“A lot of what we were doing is kind of staying up with what was going on across the street” with renovation of a floor of a building west of the state Capitol into legislative meeting rooms and office space, said Laverty.

He said he and Cooper met twice with Bureau of Legislative Research Director David Ferguson to work out things and didn’t have to call a committee meeting.

“I have no apologies to make for that,” said Laverty, who said he has collected per diem for meetings with legislative staff as a committee chairman since 1999.

NEWSPAPER FAULTED

The Democrat-Gazette for years has tallied these payments and reported the totals to its readers.

Laverty said he’s been critical of the newspaper in legislative circles.

The paper’s reporting has “done a very detrimental thing to the people of Arkansas in the way that you constantly hound elected officials and make them look bad,” Laverty said. “You all do it more than anyone else.”

The past several years, the Democrat-Gazette also has reported about lawmakers receiving mileage expense checks totaling more than $1,000 for trips to Boston and Seattle.

The paper also reported about one lawmaker taking a circuitous route through several states to get to a meeting in another state on a trip financed by Arkansas taxpayers. He reimbursed the state after that was reported.

EFFORTS TO CHANGE

In 2006, an attempt by the late Rep. Jodie Mahony, D-El Dorado, to stop committee chairmen from being paid per diem plus mileage to meet with staff members was scuttled by the Legislative Council’s executive subcommittee.

In 2009, state Rep. Ann Clemmer, RBenton, offered a proposal requiring lawmakers to choose the “most advantageous” way to travel when going more than 500 miles on official state business, which she said would be the cheapest. A House committee rejected her legislation.

House Speaker Robert S.Moore Jr. said legislative leaders have agreed upon an ethics bill that includes a provision capping travel reimbursements to lawmakers at the cheapest form of travel, whether it be by airplane or private vehicle.

It’s like the travel policy governing state employees, he said.

Executive-branch agencies’ regulations say employees may travel by plane, train, bus, taxi, private vehicle/aircraft, rented or state-owned automobile, “whichever method serves the requirements of the state most economically and advantageously.”

Reimbursement for out-of-state travel will be “the lesser of coach-class airfare or the established rate of private car mileage,” the rules say, and those who travel by commercial air “shall utilize coach accommodations, except in those circumstances where first-class accommodations would be more economical for the state.”

$1,000 TRIPS

Last year, only one lawmaker was paid more than $1,000 for mileage on an out-of-state trip.

Former state Rep. David Cook, a Democrat from Williford, collected $1,798.50 for 3,597 miles on a trip to San Diego for an American Legislative Exchange Council conference in August, according to the records.

The Bureau of Legislative Research paid $34 a day for meals for 11 days to Cook and $710 for “incidentals.” The conference was Aug. 5-8, according to bureau records. The bureau paid nothing to Cook for lodging, but paid $2,882.50 in total to him.

Cook was eligible to receive payment for meals and lodging for every 400 miles traveled under the Internal Revenue Service’s travel guidelines and payments for meals and lodging for a day before the conference as well, said Davis.

Cook, who lost his bid for the Democratic nomination in the 1st Congressional District in May, said he never had attended an American Legislative Exchange Council meeting previously. He wanted to attend because people urged him to. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, spoke at the conference, he said.

“I just took my motor home, and that way I didn’t get anything for lodging because I had it, and it was cheaper on the state,” he said.

Cook said he doesn’t know whether it would have been cheaper for him to fly to San Diego and back and stay at a hotel than to drive his motor home to the conference.

He said he thought it would be “pretty well” the same cost to the state.

Bill Halter appointed Cook to the state Ethics Commission a few weeks ago when Halter was still lieutenant governor.

State Rep. Les Carnine, RRogers, drove to the San Diego meeting as well.

“We wanted to drive,” he said.

But he only billed the House $500 for mileage. Carnine said that was the approximate cost of an airplane ticket.

He said he was following the practice of his previous employers in Arkansas and Texas, where he was reimbursed for the most economical way of travel regardless of which form he used.

The House’s total tab for Carnine to attend that conference was $2,784, according to House records.

Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, D-Crossett, is one of the lawmakers who have drawn mileage expenses of more than $1,000 in previous years for driving to conferences.

Last year,he said he’s always driven to national and Southern conference meetings during his years in the Legislature because it allows his wife to accompany him without him having to buy a plane ticket for her, and that he “never checked” whether it would be cheaper for him to fly.

He’s chairman of the Senate Education Committee and is barred from running for re-election in 2012 under the term-limits amendment.

Jeffress said in an interview that he billed the state for the cost of a plane ticket to a legislative conference in Charleston, S.C., last year, although he drove there and back.

“[It] was just cheaper to fly, so I charged the airline ticket,” he said.

He said he did that, “so I wouldn’t be No. 1 again,” and acknowledged that he drew criticism last year for driving long distances to conferences and collecting mileage expenses.

In 2009, he collected $60,092 in per diem, mileage and expenses to lead the list of payments to legislator. That’s the most a lawmaker has collected during a year in the past several years.

In 2010, Jeffress collected $52,427, which ranked third among lawmakers.

“It doesn’t take me long to throw down a hot horseshoe. It didn’t bother me; I couldn’t tell any difference in the money I had in my pocket one way or the other, so I did what everybody wanted me to do,” said Jeffress.

He said he almost filed a bill similar to Clemmer’s, but “I thought, ‘No, I don’t need to be the one to file that because everyone would point their finger at me.’“

Jeffress drove to the Southern Legislative Conference meeting, but billed the Senate for the cheapest round-trip air ticket from Little Rock to Charleston on Expedia.com, according to Senate records. That was $406.

“Keep in mind that if I had taken a flight to Charleston, I would have been eligible for mileage to and from Crossett, plus airport parking for five days,” Jeffress wrote in a memo to Senate Secretary Ann Cornwell, who said the mileage expense would have been $145 and hotel parking would have been $20 a day.

Last year, Jeffress flew to a National Conference of State Legislatures seminar in New York in March, a conference by the group in Louisville, Ky., in July, and the Southern Regional Education Board meeting in Annapolis, Md., according to bureau and Senate records.

The total bill for his four out-of-state conferences to the bureau and Senate was $5,196, the records show, and the National Conference of State Legislatures paid for some hotel and registration costs.

TOPPING $50,000

Having eight legislators drawing expenses of more than $50,000 each in a year is a decline from 2009, when 20 did it.

Still, the trend is that the pattern is growing despite the 2010 downturn.

The first year in which an individual lawmaker collected more than $50,000 was 2007.

In 2008, four collected more than $50,000.

Then, 20 in 2009.

NO PROPOSALS YET

As a candidate in 2008,James McLean said he would propose putting “stringent caps and limits” on how much lawmakers get.

But the Batesville Democrat has yet to propose such a cap in his first two years in the Legislature.

State records show he collected $34,935 in per diem, mileage and other expenses in 2009 and $26,090 last year.

McLean said he plans to work with Moore and the House Management Committee on creating guidelines for interim legislative committees with the aim of reducing per-diem and other costs for having so many committee meetings.

KIDD

Former state Rep. Ray Kidd, DJonesboro, collected $54,064 in per diem, mileage and other expenses last year to rank No. 2 among lawmakers, according to legislative records.

He’s barred from re-election under the state’s term limits amendment.

Asked why he attended the Southern Legislative Conference meeting in July in Charleston, S.C., at a cost of $2,674 to the bureau, Kidd asked, “Why not? I went there because it was there and was available. I am out of politics and it doesn’t really matter. I am not ashamed of anything I did. If I had a chance to go to the conference again, I would. I have no regrets.”

Then, he hung up his phone to end the conversation with a reporter.

WILLS

After he lost his bid for the Democratic nomination in the 2nd Congressional District, then-House Speaker Robbie Wills attended the National Speakers Conference in Annapolis, Md., in June, the National Conference of State Legislatures meeting in Louisville in July and then the Southern Legislative Conference meeting in Charleston, S.C., before attending a legislative gathering in Dublin, Ireland.

The cost to the House for the trips was $4,006, including $204 for the Ireland trip, according to House records.

Wills said he attended the National Speakers Conference with Moore and, “it greatly helped our transition.”

He said he served on the board of the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, which covered some of his expenses for the legislative conference in Ireland and he covered the rest.

“The state benefited because of my leadership positions within SLLF, NCSL (Legislative Effectiveness Standing Committee chairman) Southern Legislative Conference (Executive Committee member), where I had a hand in developing model legislation and policy positions for use by all state legislatures, including ours,”Wills said by e-mail. “These conferences are the best continuing education we can provide for our legislators since we are a term-limited Legislature. Generally, third-term members are more likely to be involved in developing the state budget and major policy initiatives for the following session, so its important for members to finish their terms strong.”

‘MORE JUDICIOUS’

Moore, a Democrat from Arkansas City, said he’s drafting a letter to committee chairmen in the form of a policy to be “more judicious” in scheduling meetings “so we don’t have a meeting of one committee on one morning and then another committee meeting [the next morning] and another committee the next morning.”

“We will use a full day’s calendar to do our committee work. The intent of that being that we will use our travel and per diem to meet attendance at those meetings on one, two or three days a week rather than perhaps three, four or five days a week,” he said.

Moore said it’s important for the committees to meet in various parts of the state, but he wants to have a “better plan in place as to how we control those meetings so we don’t get a concentration of meetings in one area of the state that tends to burden the taxpayer.”

In the term-limits era, the House’s policy is for representatives to learn the legislative process by attending meetings to “be involved” in the process, Moore said.

Asked whether he was referring to the perception that some lawmakers sign in for per diem at the start of the meetings and then leave without participating, he replied, “If that is a problem, it’s a problem we would like to eliminate.”

ZERO

One legislator drew nothing.

That was state Sen. David Johnson, D-Little Rock, vice president of community investment for the Arkansas Community Foundation.

“I just happen to be in a situation where my office [at Union Station] is close to the Capitol, so I don’t have extra travel, and I don’t have a need for an additional office because I conduct all my legislative business at the Capitol. It’s about a two-minute drive from my office to the Capitol,” Johnson said.

He didn’t attend any out-of-state conference last year because he’s “just never felt a need.” He said he attended one on juvenile justice in 2006 and another on lawmakers and the courts working together in 2009.

“I get some great ideas [for legislation] from people who I know that are constituents, so I keep plenty busy with ideas that I identify and that other people identify for me without having to necessarily go to conferences,” Johnson said.

He said it’s also better for his family for him to be at home.

He and his wife have two daughters and are expecting a third this spring, he said.

“I don’t fault other legislators at all,” he said. “Each of us has his or her own unique situation.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/30/2011

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