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Table of Contents

• Summary
• Introduction
• Officials Traveling On Somebody Else’s Dime
• Lobbyist-Reported Travel Gifts
• Officeholder-Reported Travel Gifts
• Travel Destinations
• Travel Reforms

CORRECTION: An early version of this report counted travel expenditures for three officials who were reimbursed by the state. Since these were not "travel gifts" they should not have been included in this report. The affected officials were Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Reps. Mike Krusee and Donna Howard. The numbers have been corrected here. TPJ regrets the error.

Summary

• On 363 occasions from January 2005 through November 2006 private interests paid the travel costs of 81 sitting or soon-to-be elected Texas officials.

• Governor Rick Perry was the top recipient of these travel gifts, receiving 66 of them—or 20 percent of the total studied. Private interests reported spending $205,460 on gubernatorial wanderlust. Three-fourths of this amount came from three wealthy businessmen: Flatonia sausage magnate Danny Janecka, El Paso refinery executive Paul Foster and Houston auto wholesaler Thomas Dan Friedkin. A trucking trade group also spent $14,580 on a private jet to fly Perry’s family to Los Angeles for the Rose Bowl.

• The next-largest recipients of travel gifts were Attorney General Greg Abbott, Agriculture Commissioner-turned-Comptroller Susan Combs and Senator-turned-Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples.

• The top legislative recipients of travel gifts were Senator Kim Brimer (R-Fort Worth) and Representatives Kino Flores (D-Palmview) and Mike Krusee (R-Round Rock).

• Twenty-eight registered Texas lobbyists bankrolled 137 of the 363 travel gifts studied here. Two Associated General Contactors lobbyists accounted for almost half of all lobby-donated travel, sending dozens of officials to conferences at luxury hotels in Lake Tahoe, the Adirondacks and Padre Island.

• The lobby sent two state officials on international junkets. The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce paid for the governor’s economic development aide to visit South Korea. The Texas Council of Engineering Companies sent Rep. Kino Flores to a summer conference in Quebec.

• Private interests other than registered lobbyists paid for 226 of the 363 travel gifts and these travel gifts had a combined reported value of $549,514. Amarillo-based American Housing Foundation President Steve Sterquell was the top donor outside of the formal lobby.

• Texas officials take many more junkets to cooler climates when temperatures back home get oppressively hot. Officials took 37 trips to high-altitude or northerly destinations that generally boast milder summer climates than does Texas. Eighty-six percent of these trips to cooler climates occurred during the four months when Austin’s average high exceeds 85 degrees.