State travel costs up in 1st fiscal quarter

AUGUSTA – Out-of-state travel expenses among state employees rose 20 percent between July and September despite an order from Gov. John Baldacci to cut travel to a bare minimum, according to a newspaper analysis.

State bureaucrats spent nearly $1.4 million on out-of-state trips in the first quarter of fiscal year 2006, which began in July, according to the Maine Sunday Telegram.

Thirteen out of 34 state or state-supported agencies increased the amount they spent sending employees on business trips outside of Maine during the three-month period compared to a year earlier, the newspaper said. Out-of-state travel expenses tripled at the Department of Audit, rose 166 percent at the Department of Labor and more than doubled in the Legislature and in the judiciary.

The Baldacci administration argued that the numbers were misleading because year-to-year comparisons show a 9 percent drop in travel spending from fiscal 2004 to fiscal 2005.

“I think there’s an issue with your figures,” Baldacci said. “Sometimes you get a bump [early in the fiscal year], but then it calms down and steadies out” over the rest of the year.

“The numbers, year to year, are telling me that there actually is a surplus that is left over” at year’s end, the governor said, because state government in each of the last four years spent less on out-of-state travel than the Legislature authorized.

Agency heads defended the travel, saying much of it is paid for by the federal government or by professional groups that reimburse the state for its costs.

Federal funds, they said, often require state workers to attend conferences and training sessions. The trips, they added, are essential to train workers, do jobs that require out-of-state travel or generate ideas that save the state money or improve state services.

“It’s an infinitesimal cost compared to the value that is received,” state Auditor Neria Douglass said of the $2,800 trip that she and five of her staffers took to Rhode Island in September for a training program there.

Still, the numbers are raising questions.

Rep. Darlene Curley, R-Scarborough, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, said she was concerned about the rise in travel costs.

“Every citizen in the state of Maine is tightening their belt because of the price of gas, heating oil and natural gas, and the state should be doing the same,” she said.

Rep. Ben Dudley, D-Portland, said the increase will make the Appropriations Committee ask questions.

But Dudley, who serves on the committee, said it is important to remember that such trips are about “serving the public interest in Maine.”