Per diem, expense payouts up in ’09

LITTLE ROCK — Twenty Arkansas lawmakers collected more than $50,000 in per diem, mileage and expense reimbursement last year, including one who collected more than $60,000.

Sen. Jimmy Jeffress of Crossett drew $60,092.

He’s an often-outspoken Democrat and retired teacher who is chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

Per diem, mileage and expense reimbursements are in addition to the state salary for legislators. That salary for calendar year 2009 was $15,615 for all legislators except two. Those two are the Senate president pro tempore and the House speaker, whose salaries were $17,486 each in 2009.

This is the first time in Arkansas that per diem (a daily allowance for lodging, meals and incidentals), mileage and reimbursements have exceeded $60,000 for a lawmaker in a year.

Even in a recession, Jeffress said, it would be difficult for him to reduce his expenses to the state.

“We are experiencing all these problems with the state, and my constituents expect to be represented and have their voice heard [at the state Capitol in Little Rock],” he said. “I don’t think the electorate elected me to sit at home.”

He’s “never put a pencil” to whether he comes out ahead financially by being in the Legislature, he said.

“As far as I know I am not coming out behind, but I am sure not coming out way ahead,” he said. “It basically goes to automobileexpenses and being there [at the Capitol].”

The House Education Committee chairman, Rep. Bill Abernathy, D-Mena, collected the second-most - $56,592.

“In the end it’s not that financially rewarding to serve,” said Abernathy, a retired school superintendent.

In the term-limits era, when knowledge doesn’t come from decades of service, legislators have been encouraged to attend as many meetings as possible to learn, he said.

“From off the street to making policy is quite a jump,” Abernathy said.

The only ways to reduce costs are for lawmakers to not attend meetings or to reduce how much they are paid for attending, he said.

“If you don’t go to meetings, you don’t have the knowledge to be an effective legislator,” Abernathy said.

MONEY FOR MEETINGS

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

Some of the mileage reimbursements were for long trips, such as drives to and from Philadelphia to attend a conference. Several lawmakers also drew expense payments for attending an energy conference in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Payments for Arkansas’ 135 lawmakers totaled $5.4 million in 2009, the last year in which there was a “regular” legislative session, meaning a full-blown session dealing with state budget and any other issues. That was up from $4.7 million in 2007, and $3.9 million in 2005, both regular-session years.

In 2008, the payments totaled $4.4 million, up from $3.6 million in 2006. Neither was a regular-session year.

In 2007, the Legislature enacted Act 288 to increase office-expense allowances and the money that legislators who live within 50 miles of the Capitol receive in lieu of per diem and mileage. It was estimated the action would increase expenses about $850,000 a year.

Rep. Bruce Maloch, DMagnolia, co-chairman of the Joint Budget Committee, said the Legislature “should do all it can to limit expenditures, as Arkansas families are doing. Legislators should, however, be reimbursed for expenses.”

Mileage rates and other expenses have increased significantly since 2005 and are generally based on IRS guidelines, he said.

“The expense budget should not be so restrictive as to prohibit committees from dealing with issues that require study and action,” Maloch said.

Lawmakers who receive more generally attend more meetings, travel to more outof-state conferences and live farther from the Capitol.

According to state records, Jeffress received:

$37,060 from the state Senate. That includes $18,000 for office expenses, $15,013 in per diem and mileage for the regular session, and $3,648 in travel-expense reimbursement for the Southern Legislative Conference meeting in North Carolina and a Southern Regional Education Board meeting in Texas.

$21,709 from the Bureau of Legislative Research. That includes $9,473 in per diem for attending meetings, $9,612 for mileage, $1,494 for lodging and $823 for miscellaneous expenses.

$1,323 from the Division of Legislative Audit for per diem and mileage for attending meetings.

His mileage expenses include $1,376 from the legislative bureau for driving to the National Conference of State Legislatures’ meeting in Philadelphia and back. The total cost for the trip was $3,899.

He said that rather than fly he’s always driven to national and Southern conference meetings during his 13 years in the Legislature because it allows his wife to accompany him without him having to buy a plane ticket for her.

Jeffress said he’s “never really checked” whether it would be cheaper for him to fly to the conferences, although other lawmakers have flown for less than what he was paid in mileage.

“What if I did check it out to see? I am still going to drive no matter what,” Jeffress said. “I would like for my wife to go with me, and the last three or four years we have made an activity of taking some of our grandchildren with us, because they have these wonderful programs at the [conferences] where they do children and youth events, and it’s a learning experience for them.” SETTING LIMITS

The year 2007 was the first time that an individual lawmaker collected more than $50,000 in a year. Then-Senate President Pro Tempore Jack Critcher, D-Batesville, who also was chairman of the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee, received $54, 577. His House health committee counterpart, Rep. Eddie Cooper, DMelbourne, collected the second-most, $52,625.

In 2008, four state lawmakers collected more than $50,000, with Cooper getting the most, $53,009, and Critcher the second-most, $52,556. Cooper’s reimbursements for 2009 came to $54,892, the fifth-most collected.

When Critcher’s wife, Vickie, was a candidate for the state House in 2008, opponent James McLean criticized Critcher for receiving the $54,577 in 2007. McLean defeated Vickie Critcher after vowing to propose legislation to put “stringent caps and limits” on how much lawmakers are paid for per diem, mileage, office expenses and other expenses.

But McLean, a Batesville Democrat, has yet to propose such a cap during his first 13 months in the Legislature.

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

He said he met “resistance” among lawmakers he’s consulted about setting limits, but “we still are in the process of evaluating it. Nothing is off the table.”

House Speaker Robbie Wills, D-Conway, said McLean hasn’t talked to him about such a proposal but that legislators are studying ways to save money.

A question that needs to be answered is whether the plan would make it harder for legislators from areas far from Little Rock to represent their constituents as effectively as those who live in Little Rock, Wills said.

Lawmakers who don’t live within 50 miles of the Capitol are now eligible for a per diem of $149 per day for attending meetings in Little Rock, $148 per day for meetings inHot Springs and $116 per day for meetings in other cities, according to the Bureau of Legislative Research.

The per diem allowance from Oct. 1, 2008, through Sept. 30, 2009, was $142 per day for meetings in Little Rock, $147 per day for Hot Springs and $109 for other cities.

The mileage rate is now 50 cents per mile, down from 55 cents per mile in 2009, according to the bureau.

McLean noted that he cosponsored legislation in 2009 that would have forced lawmakers to choose the leastexpensive way to travel when going more than 500 miles on official state business. The bill did not pass.

The lead sponsor, Rep. Ann Clemmer, R-Benton, said last year that her bill wasn’t aimed at any particular member, but she had “read with shock” newspaper accounts of travel by car to the West Coast several years ago.

This newspaper reported that Jeffress and Rep. Rick Green, R-Van Buren, along with then-Rep. Horace Hardwick, R-Bentonville, drove to a National Conference of State Legislatures conference in Seattle in 2005. Jeffress received $2,300 in travel reimbursements, Green received $1,732 and Hardwick $1,701.

Wills, a candidate for the 2nd Congressional District seat, said the House Management Committee “is exploring how we could ensure the lowest cost for travel, taking into consideration the needs of individual members,” a study he said was prompted by Clemmer’s “suggestion that members travel by the most economical means possible.”

The plan is to try to have something for legislators to consider before the 2011 legislative session, said Rep. Gregg Reep, D-Warren, who is among the legislators exploring the issue.

Clemmer said she plans to reintroduce “something in the way of travel-reimbursement reform” in the 2011 regular session.

Clemmer drove to Philadelphia for the national legislative conference, but she asked the Division of Legislative Audit to reimburse her for the $674.89 cost of a round-trip plane ticket rather than the standard mileage rate, which would have been 55 cents per mile for 2,388 miles, or $1,313.40. She also asked the division to reimburse her for only one night’s hotel stay each way during the trip to and from Philadelphia, although the trip took two days each way, according to state records. She was reimbursed a total of $263.03 for lodging in Chambersburg, Pa., on the way to Philadelphia and in Elizabethtown, Ky., on the way back.

The division paid her $3,142.12 in total for the trip’s expenses.

Clemmer said the money saved “is not going to balance any unbalanced budget, but I do think it’s meaningful and I think there is some meaning to it. Some of it is just symbolism that we be held to the same standard as other state employees.”ECONOMICAL TRAVEL

Executive-branch state agencies’ travel regulations say employees’ travel “may be achieved 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.”

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

State Rep. Barry Hyde, D-North Little Rock, chairman of the House Management Committee, was reimbursed $2,180 in mileage by the House for flying in a private plane to Philadelphiafor the national conference, for which he was paid $3,859 in total. The payment for the plane trip was based on IRS guidelines. Rep. Bobby Pierce, D-Sheridan, accompanied Hyde and didn’t claim transportation expenses.

Hyde said it probably would have been cheaper to buy a commercial plane ticket.

“I think we had two others who were supposed to go, but late in the game they decided not to attend and they left us in a lurch,” he said, “so then we would have been trying to book a commercial flight at a late point.”

Hyde also was paid $867 in mileage reimbursement by the House to fly his private plane to a conference in Winston-Salem, N.C., but he agreed to accept auto mileage as the reimbursement.

Reep was paid $1,355 in mileage by the legislative bureau for driving to the conference in Philadelphia. He said he was paid for the direct route to Philadelphia and “not for side trips” he made to do some family research.

“I was trying to find my original sixth-generation great-great-grandfather who came to this country from over in Germany and I found his grave down in a little place called Reepsville, N.C.,” Reep said.

As part of the $4,267 cost of the trip, the bureau paid for lodging expenses and meals for Reep in Christiansburg, Va.; Lancaster, Pa.; Philadelphia; Williamsburg, Va.; Winston-Salem; and Asheville, N.C.

Wills’ payments totaled $37,583, including $28,200 in office expenses and $9,383 for travel expenses to meetings in Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Saskatoon; Winston-Salem; Austin, Texas; Sea Island, Ga.; Nashville, Tenn.; and San Diego.

He said he’s been asked to serve on the boards of several groups that “we are members of in order to share what we learned in Arkansas with other states.” Wills said his travel represents “an appropriate level of involvement by the speaker of the House.”

He said he attended an Energy Council meeting in Canada because he’s on the council’s executive committee. He said that’s the only meeting that he’s been able to attend so far.

Arkansas has “a large and growing energy industry and the Fayetteville Shale is chief among those,” Wills said, and he considered the council’s meeting to be educational for him.