Taxpayers pay travel costs for term-limited senators

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By NATE JENKINS / The Associated Press

After term-limited state senators cast their last votes and become lame ducks, some of them will be jetting off to conferences in New Orleans, Chicago and elsewhere out of state.

Nebraska taxpayers will pay the bills.

While many state senators agree that attending out-of-state conferences held by national associations are useful, citing good ideas for Nebraska legislation, the practice raises a question: Why underwrite trips for senators who won’t be around next session?

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“I wonder how much help that really is,” said Sen. Cap Dierks of Ewing, who stopped short of criticizing his colleagues.

Already, three of the 14 term-limited state senators not coming back next year have been approved for state-funded, out-of-state travel to conferences after the session ends next month.

More such trips are likely, if 2006 is any indication.

That year — the last in office for 20 of the state’s 49 senators — nine term-limited senators took out-of-state trips on the state’s dime, according to an Associated Press review of travel documents.

Total cost: $20,191.

A state senator elected by his peers to oversee travel says he’s handcuffed by a state travel policy that gives him no discretion.

“I can’t say no to them — they’re full members of the Legislature until December,” said Sen. Lowen Kruse of Omaha. Records show that two of the three senators approved for out-of-state travel, Vickie McDonald of St. Paul and Ray Aguilar of Grand Island, have been the Legislature’s most frequent fliers over the past two years. They totaled $30,150 in state-funded, out-of-state travel expenses at conferences in such places as Puerto Rico, Phoenix, Boston and Santa Barbara, Calif.

Under the Legislature’s travel policy, lawmakers, including those that are term-limited, can take as many trips as they wish to conferences held by organizations of which the Legislature is a member. The two largest groups are the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Council of State Governments, which receive a combined $200,000 annually in dues from the state.

McDonald, who sits on several task forces for both organizations and plans to go to their conferences in Washington and the Black Hills of South Dakota after the session ends, said her trips are justified even though she’ll soon leave the Legislature.

One reason, she said, is her plan to invite lawmakers from around the country to a national Council of State Governments conference that will be held in Omaha late this year.

Sen. DiAnna Schimek of Lincoln, the third term-limited senator already approved for an out-of-state trip, gave a similar reason for planning to attend a Council of State Governments conference in Lexington, Ky.

Getting more people to go to the Omaha conference, Schimek said, will have an economic payoff for the state.

McDonald added that the education she will receive on policy issues will benefit the state, even when she’s out of the Legislature.

“There’s a small segment of senators that have become so interested and involved in the political scene they want to continue to serve the state in some capacity, and I’m one of those,” said McDonald.

She also said it was unlikely that she would seek another state elective office after voter-approved term limits push her out of the Capitol. It limits lawmakers to two consecutive, four-year terms.

Chicago and New Orleans can expect visits from Aguilar.

Advertisements for the National Conference of State Legislatures event in New Orleans urge lawmakers to experience a “spectacular closing Mardi Gras party at the Superdome, and on Saturday hear from a provocative speaker, take advantage of some volunteer opportunities at a local food bank or help replant the wetlands, or brave the bayou and venture deep into the Louisiana swamps aboard a flatboat to see alligators and more!”

As vice chairman of a conference committee and an active member of its immigration task force, Aguilar said, it makes sense for him to continue going to conferences even though he will not be back in the Legislature next year. He said that what he learns at the conferences will be useful because he still will have legislative duties after the session ends.

Lawmakers study policy issues and hold hearings when the Legislature is not in session. The work often leads to bills for subsequent sessions.

Sen. Kruse doesn’t want to be a travel cop who could deny frivolous requests, and he doesn’t criticize the travel requests so far by the current slate of term-limited senators. But, he said, he’d like the senators to explain the trips’ value to the state.

That way, he said, “you could shut somebody off like Pam.”

He was referring to former Sen. Pam Redfield of Omaha, one of the senators pushed out after the 2006 session by term limits.

In a seven-month span after Redfield’s last legislative session, she spent $5,171 in state money going to conferences in the Napa Valley of California, in Phoenix, Boston, Chicago and in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

“Even though my work on the floor (of the Legislature) was complete, my work on behalf of (the state) was not complete,” Redfield said.

She had leadership positions with the associations, Redfield said, so was obligated to go. She said a trip to a conference held by one of the groups, the National Conference of Insurance Legislators, helped lead to changes that allowed two insurance companies to move to the state.

Lawmakers can use campaign funds for out-of-state travel.

Records show Redfield had between $16,600 and about $20,400 in her campaign account during the year she took the trips.

Redfield thought there was a chance she would run for another office, she said, so used state money for those trips instead.