Tennessee lawmakers pay sky-high prices to fly

Beyond the $1.2 million lawmakers spent on roughly 720 out-of-state trips since 2009, a USA Today Network-Tennessee review found state legislators often have paid exorbitant amounts of money for flights.

All of the travel has been funded by taxpayers and comes from the legislature’s operating budget. In the current fiscal year, the legislature’s budget totaled nearly $44 million.

While planning for out-of-state travel, lawmakers and staffers are limited to standard hotel rooms and commercial airline tickets, said Connie Ridley, director of legislative administration. Seat upgrades are not eligible for reimbursement.

Although lawmakers are allowed to fly on any day they prefer, they can receive per diems and hotel reimbursements only for the day before a conference until the day after it ends.

She said lawmakers are not required to book flights well in advance of the actual trip.

That could partially explain the high costs of some flights, including when the state paid for four Memphis-based Democrats’ $800 flights to Los Angeles in 2015. A similar flight for the same time period this year can be found for as low as $380. Others who went on the trip paid for flights ranging from $397 to

$629. Prices often vary based on the location of departure.

When 13 House members went to Alaska in 2014, their flights ranged from $762 to $1,727. The plane tickets for the seven senators who went to the conference in Anchorage that year ranged from $673 to $1,370.

It cost $667 for Sen. Ed Jackson, R-Jackson, to fly to Washington, D.C., in December 2014. When Rep. Larry Miller, D-Memphis, took a trip to Atlanta in 2013, his flight cost $827.

Mark Cunningham, who serves as spokesman for the conservative advocacy group the Beacon Center of Tennessee, said the state needs to implement ways to rein in such expensive flights.

“It is inexcusable to book a trip a few weeks ahead of time at a much higher rate when you have known about the conference for months,” he said. “These politicians would never do that with their own money for a family vacation so they certainly should not be doing that with taxpayer money.”

Cunningham suggested lawmakers could adopt a new rule requiring lawmakers to book their flights weeks in advance.

Ridley also said there are no time limits for when a lawmaker can be reimbursed for a trip. For instance, Sen. Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville, was reimbursed $1,000 in 2012, two years after the conference she attended.

Cunningham said the state should make it easier for the public to access information about outof-state travel. Today, the website that contains travel records does not allow the public to view an individual lawmaker’s year-by-year travel history. Instead, the public has to look through troves of information.

The website does not contain information about lawmakers’ family members who join them on the trip — a practice that is commonplace. Travel disclosure forms for members of the U.S. House of Representatives require disclosure of any transportation, lodging, meal and other expenses for lawmakers and any accompanying family members. No such requirement is placed on Tennessee lawmakers.

Ben Cunningham, an anti-tax crusader and head of the Nashville Tea Party who is not related to Mark Cunningham, pointed to the $104,000 in out-of-state travel by Sen. Reggie Tate, D-Memphis, as evidence of the necessity of making such information readily accessible to the public.

“The Tennessee legislature has done a reasonable job of that, but they certainly could do better,” he said, expressing the need for a user-friendly system in which people can see their individual lawmaker’s travel over time.

In addition, the state’s website also contains multiple inaccuracies, ranging from duplicate entries to inaccurate expenditures.

“These government websites shouldn’t be so hard for an average citizen or even a journalist to find out things that need to be disclosed,” Mark Cunningham said. “The way they’re doing it is not intuitive, it’s not easy to use.”

House Speaker Beth Harwell and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said additional disclosures or changes to the state’s website aren’t necessary.

Harwell said the legislature takes transparency seriously, which is why travel records are regularly posted on the state’s website. A spokesman for McNally said the lieutenant governor is “comfortable with the current level of transparency.”

Reach Joel Ebert at jebert@tennessean.com or 615-772-1681 and on Twit ter @joelebert29.