Paid For Miles Not Driven

Here’s a question many smart people might get wrong. If a Connecticut legislator requested mileage reimbursements but didn’t drive the miles claimed — for example, if she carpooled with another legislator who drove them both in his car to the state Capitol in Hartford and back home again, but she put in for the mileage anyway — would she be in trouble?

The answer is no.

We know the answer because that very thing happened in 2017. State Rep. Christine Conley, D-Groton, fell and broke both lower bones of her right leg on

March 16 of that year, rendering her unable to drive for weeks — and making it necessary for others to drive her back and forth from Hartford so she could perform her duties as a legislator.

She put in for mileage anyway, and she isn’t in any trouble now.

That’s because for the 187 members of the Connecticut General Assembly, mileage payments are not “reimbursements” in the normal sense that almost everybody in a private-sector job has experienced them. They are paid under a standard “mileage allowance” that is based on the round-trip distance between a House or Senate member’s home and Hartford, and — get this — it doesn’t matter if the legislator drives the distance.

Under a state law that’s been on the books for a half-century or so, a legislator can request a mileage allowance for any day he or she shows up at the Capitol or some other location to perform official legislative duties. If six legislators carpool in a van from Fairfield County up to

Hartford and back, all six are eligible for allowances based on the round-trip mileage between their homes and the Capitol.

That’s all according to Jim Tamburro, the executive director of the Office of

Legislative Management. “Legislators receive a mileage allowance, not a reimbursement, and they can receive that allowance if they are coming to the Capitol for legislative business,” he told Government Watch. “They don’t have to drive themselves, they don’t have to drive their own cars, to be eligible.”

“Over the years, we have had legislators that carpooled together,” Tamburro said. “They certainly are eligible for that allowance every time they come to the Capitol, whether they drive or not.”

The Miles Not Driven

And so it was with Conley, a freshman lawmaker who took office in January 2017 after defeating incumbent Rep. John Scott, R-Groton, in the November 2016 election.

After Conley’s injury in mid-March of that year made her unable to operate a car, one of the people who drove her some of the time was her fellow Groton Democrat, Rep. Joe de la Cruz, whose 41st House District is next to Conley’s 40th District.

Conley acknowledged in a phone interview Thursday that during the period when she was recovering from her injury, she carpooled at times with de la Cruz. “There were times that Joe was able to drive me one way, or times he was able to drive me both ways” between Groton and Hartford, she said.

But she said she didn’t know how many times — and, when asked if she ever took the mileage allowance for any trips on which de la Cruz drove, she said, “I didn’t keep a log” and did not recall.

In April 2017, a month in which she acknowledges she did no driving at all, both she and de la Cruz submitted mileage claims to the Office of Legislative Management and were paid with taxpayer funds at the rate of 53.5 cents per mile.

Conley actually got paid more for mileage than de la Cruz did for that month — claiming seven round trips of 110 miles each, for a total of 770 miles and a payment of $411.95. Meanwhile, de la Cruz reported only three round trips of 104.6 miles each, for a total of 313.8 miles and a payment of $167.88, according to state records.

In May 2017, de la Cruz reported 12 round trips and was paid $671.53 for mileage; in June it was eight trips for $447.69. But Conley outdid him for that period. She was paid $823.90 for 14 trips in May; in June, her total was $470.80 for eight trips.

All of the above raises questions as to why it would be Conley, the one with the leg fractures, putting in for more trips and receiving more in mileage payments than de la Cruz. But on Thursday, Conley had few definite answers. “I unfortunately didn’t keep any records of what days [and] how I got there ,” she said.

“I got to the Capitol to do my job in a variety of ways,” she said, adding that she’d compiled “a 98 percent voting record.” In addition to the carpooling with de la Cruz, she said, “I took taxicabs … and I took Ubers … and I paid for these myself. … A lot of times I had to pay an awful lot more than what the mileage reimbursement was.”

She added that she had to get rides to lots of places other than Hartford — to the doctor, physical therapy, her Norwich law office and events she attended as a legislator in her district for which she said she didn’t seek a mileage allowance. She said she didn’t recall exactly when she began driving again, but it was by the 2017 Fourth of July Parade in Groton.

The Courant on Thursday asked the House Democrats’ press office to have de la Cruz call back to answer some questions, but that didn’t happen.

Payments For Pensions

Not all state legislators avail themselves of the mileage allowance. It’s not automatic. You have to submit a request, which lawmakers now can accomplish on their state-provided laptops. There is language that appears on the computer screen, before submitting the request, requiring certification under penalty of the law that the information is truthful and correct.

The issue of receiving payments for miles not driven isn’t the only one to have arisen concerning the mileage allowances. The other issue is that legislators get to count their mileage payments in the calculation of their pensions. It’s arisen off and on over the years — and, most recently, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Herbst, one of the contenders defeated by Bob Stefanowski for the party’s nomination, made a campaign issue of decrying the law that gives lawmakers that pension perk.

Tamburro had no overall totals available Thursday for how much is paid per year in mileage allowances to legislators.

The question of whether Conley should have put in for miles she didn’t drive — as opposed to whether she was legally permitted to — was raised by two interested Republicans despite Tamburro’s explanation of the law. One of them was Scott, who now is trying to regain his former House seat as Conley’s opponent in the Nov. 6 election. The other was Herbst — who said he was enlisted by Groton Republicans, whom he’d gotten to know during the gubernatorial campaign, to help them get to the bottom of questions about Conley’s mileage.

It was Herbst who filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Tamburro in recent days to obtain the mileage payment records of Conley and de la Cruz; Herbst then released them to The Courant.

“How can you put in for mileage when you are not driving a car?” Herbst said. “That’s nuts. People wonder why the state’s dysfunctional. Thinking like this is what makes the state dysfunctional. … I just think it’s emblematic of the pervasive culture of outright entitlement that exists under the golden dome.

“And it further underscores the need for the General Assembly to repeal the disgusting law that allows legislators to pad their pension calculations with mileage reimbursements,” he said.

Scott said Thursday that during a conversation he had with Conley at a community event in September, she had told him of her carpooling with de la Cruz following her injury in 2017. That led Groton Republicans to ask House Democrats for records of mileage payments she’d received. But after a month with no results, Herbst said they asked for his help because he had dealt with the issue before.

Scott said that when he was in the legislature, he never requested mileage payments for trips on which he didn’t drive. “This might be my first piece of legislation” — to abolish the mileage allowance — if he wins in November, he said. “I still question the integrity of such a maneuver” by Conley, he said, despite Tamburro’s explanation that the long-standing practice is legal.

Tamburro cited Section 2-15 of the Connecticut General Statutes, which deals with the “Transportation allowance for General Assembly members and members-elect.” The law says that the state “shall pay to such member as an allowance for transportation, such rate per mile as shall from time to time be determined by the Joint Committee on Legislative Management.

“The allowance shall be paid for each mile on each day that such member is required to travel: (1) From his home to the State Capitol and return therefrom to attend a session of the General Assembly or a meeting of a committee of the General Assembly or a public hearing held by any such committee or for other official legislative business, or (2) from his home to such other location within the state at which any such committee meeting or public hearing is held and return therefrom.”

Scott and Conley have a contentious history. In 2016, she slammed him during the election campaign over The Courant’s 2015 disclosure of a potential conflict of interest concerning a bill he introduced that could have benefited his insurance agency in its role as a broker for health coverage for UConn students. Then in summer 2017, after Conley had served her first eight months in the 40th District seat, Scott criticized her for co-sponsoring a workers compensation-related bill that he said could have benefited her practice as a lawyer in that field.