Free trips add up for NH legislators
CONCORD – The $100 annual paycheck, free mileage and free trips through tollbooths aren’t the only perks available to the nation’s lowest-paid Legislature.
New Hampshire lawmakers and state officials can and many do take advantage of the absence of any legal limit on privately paid-for trips and appearance fees.
Following a gift scandal that toppled then-House Speaker Gene Chandler, in 2006, the Legislature placed a $50 cap on gifts. The law is riddled with legal loopholes, one of them being expenses-paid junkets.
The Telegraph examined the small ream of reporting by legislators and state officials for trips paid and concluded these usually all-expenses-paid voyages were worth $85,087.
The total value, however, doesn’t represent the average person’s cost of travel.
That’s because the trip sponsors – think tanks, ideological groups, one-issue advocacies and foreign governments – are able to get much cheaper airfare and hotel rates than consumers can.
The reports lists such bargains as a $180 flight to Albuquerque, N.M.; $210 to San Diego; and $220 to San Francisco.
All told, there were 26 trips with a cash value of more than $1,000.
There’s also no doubt that this total is under-reported. You can count on one hand the number of legislators who reported going to the Denver meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures. One of those who did report was Nashua Democratic State Rep. Cindy Rosenwald ($1,200).
More than a dozen lawmakers were on the New Hampshire departure guest list this year.
The government of Greece gets the award for the Fly On Us award, giving $20,000 worth of all-expenses-paid trips to two husband-and-wife House of Representatives teams for their parliamentary conference in July on issues such as the Pontian Genocide, the treatment of minority Greeks in Albania and justice in Cyprus.
The travelers were former House Speaker Douglas and Stella Scamman, R-Stratham, and Derry Republican Reps. George and Phyllis Katsiakores.
The ironic twist here was the program that welcomed visiting legislators from 17 countries to the fete. The only New Hampshire name was Thomas Katsiantonis. There’s no legislator by that name here; there’s two-term Rep. George Katsiantonis, D-Manchester, but he didn’t make any trip, according to the honorarium records.
Former Massachusetts Senate President Bill Bulger helped turn the State Legislative Leaders Foundation into a national pace-setting group for relaxing and mind-stimulating seminars for the legislative elite.
For New Hampshire, they kicked in $6,492 for Sen. Matt Houde, D-Meriden, to visit the Darden School of Business in Charlottesville, Va. ($2,966); for House Speaker Teri Norelli, D-Portsmouth, and Majority Leader Mary Jane Wallner to make the winter 2008 meeting in Charlestown, S.C. ($3,084 for the pair); and for Norelli to attend an economy summit at the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia ($842).
Norelli edged out the Greek travelers by collecting $5,680 in expenses. Along with the legislative foundations were an August visit to China financed by the Chinese People Association for Fellowship ($2,500). Norelli also served on a panel for a New England Cable conference in Newport, R.I. ($402) and reported a $50 dinner paid for by the Council for State Governments.
Norelli and Senate President Sylvia Larsen, D-Concord, pegged at $45 the value of the dinner Gov. John Lynch hosted for them last Feb. 17.
Here are some other nuggets from the reports:
• Early Thinker: Kelly Ayotte, of Nashua, announced July 7 that she was resigning as attorney general to explore a 2010 run for the US Senate.
Five weeks earlier, she was a guest ($1,173) of the Republican State Leadership Committee for its late-May retreat at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa in Williamsburg, Va. The committee is heavily involved in states where AGs are elected but also pumped in big money into GOP legislative races.
• Key West, Anyone? The New Hampshire Motor Transport Association sponsors a fun winter retreat, and last February, it invited ex-Commerce Committee Chairwoman Tara Reardon, the current Employment Security Commissioner ($1,824), and Public Works Chairwoman Candace Bouchard ($1,924).
• Cracking the Books: Adult Education Administrator Art Ellison stayed up to date with $3,072 in expenses to education conferences, including one in Carson City, Nev., last March at which he taught three courses. Ellison also took three trips to Washington to meet with legislative staff.
• Wyoming is Nice in Summer, too: The freeze on out-of-state trips by state officials doesn’t apply when private groups or federal grants are footing the bill, so DCYF supervisor Michelle Rosenthal could go to last June’s second national seminar in Jackson Hole, Wyo. ($1,510), on the link between child abuse and domestic violence.
The N.H. Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence picked up the tab.
• Taxes on the Charles: The Lincoln Institute for Land Policy invited and paid for seven House members ($2,500) for a tax seminar last May. The group included House Ways and Means Chairwoman Susan Almy, D-Lebanon; Vice Chairman Bill Hatch, D-Gorham; Finance clerk Robert Foose, D-New London; Deputy Speaker Linda Foster, D-Mont Vernon; Pamela Price, R-Nashua; Jessie Osborne, D-Concord; and Frank Sapareto, R-Derry.
• Women in the Incas: Two-term Rep. Susanne Gottling, D-Sunapee, was the guest ($1,330) of the National Fund for Women Legislatures at its Sept. 5 meeting in Pueblo, N.M.
• Count Me In: Longtime Hillsborough County Commissioner Toni Pappas had the parent National Association of Counties pay all costs ($1,715) for her visit to the winter meeting of the county lobby.
Most of the trips and expenses were of a mundane variety, such as:
• Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Molly Kelly, D-Keene, who went in January to the regional meeting ($530) of the Education Commission of the States.
• Sen. Peggy Gilmour, D-Hollis, going to the April conference in Washington ($808) of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.
Kevin Landrigan can be reached at 321-7040 or klandrigan@nashuatelegraph.com.
