Lawmakers billed taxpayers for trip

Vos, others traveled for news conference

MADISON – Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and two of his GOP colleagues billed taxpayers $4,300 last year to take a state plane to Ohio so they could participate in a news conference with lawmakers from the Buckeye State.

Vos (R-Rochester) and Wisconsin Reps. Mike Rohrkaste (R-Neenah) and Tyler Vorpagel (R-Plymouth) flew to Columbus in February 2017 to join their Ohio counterparts to discuss the importance of giving states more power.

The Wisconsin lawmakers brought five staff members with them and returned the same day, according to a summary of the trip re-

cently released under Wisconsin’s open records law.

Details of the trip come to light as Vos faces scrutiny over his travel.

Vos received about $13,000 in travel and perks from outside groups last year, bringing his four-year total to about $57,000 for jaunts to England, France and elsewhere.

For the England trip, sponsors including lobbyists were charged $25,000 apiece to join the trip with Vos and lawmakers from other states, according to public records.

The trip to Ohio was different — that one was funded by Wisconsin taxpayers, not organizations that say they provide free travel to state lawmakers for educational purposes.

Gov. Scott Walker and his predecessors have long used state planes to travel Wisconsin to promote their agendas, but it is rare for state lawmakers to use state planes. In the past two years, Vos has done it only one other time, when he joined Walker this January to fly around Wisconsin to promote their plans to overhaul welfare programs.

On the trip to Ohio, Vos partnered with then-Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger to show support for having the federal government turn over more duties to the state.

“This is a little unconventional in that we have never had a press conference with another state before,” Rosenberger said at the opening of the news conference.

Vos said at the news conference he hoped to get “really good ideas” he could take back to Wisconsin.

“Legislators discussed the important issues facing each of our states, including the opioid epidemic and the growing prevalence of Alzheimer’s and dementia,” Vos spokeswoman Kit Beyer said in a statement Monday. “In addition, lawmakers began working on a coordinated effort to promote federalism in order to have Washington give states more power to innovate and reform.”

In addition to the news conference, legislators held a couple of meetings on problems facing both states and the Wisconsin group got a tour of the Ohio Statehouse, according to Brad Miller, a spokesman for Ohio House Republicans.

Rosenberger’s travel is the subject of an FBI investigation. Rosenberger resigned last month because of the investigation but said he is confident he will be cleared.

“Taxpayers paid for Robin Vos to take a state a plane so he could meet with a guy who resigned from office because he’s under investigation with the FBI,” said a statement from Joanna BeilmanDulin, research director for the liberal group One Wisconsin Now. “We need a full accounting of every single person that taxpayers financed Vos and his entourage to fly to Ohio and meet with.”

Vos last year went on a trip to France bankrolled by the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures just before he got married in Italy. Rosenberger served as his best man.

Also last year, Vos and Rosenberger took a trip to London that was funded by the conservative GOPAC Education Fund, where they met with the granddaughter of World War II-era Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The trip was valued at about $3,600, according to a recent ethics filing from Vos.

They were joined on the trip by lobbyists for the title loan industry. A GOPAC flyer for the trip says such sponsors had to pay $25,000 each to join the trip.

Vos has long supported looser regulations for the title and payday loan industries. Since 2008, title loan executive Rod Aycox and his family have funneled $87,500 to GOP candidates in Wisconsin. Aycox leads Select Management Resources, which operates in Wisconsin as LoanMax.

Wisconsin’s ethics laws generally prohibit legislators from accepting valuable gifts but do allow them to accept travel expenses to go to conferences about official business, according to the state Ethics Commission.

Jessie Balmert of the Cincinnati Enquirer contributed to this report from Columbus.