Introduction

Texas state officials are major travelers. They barnstorm the campaign trail, host campaign fundraisers, convene hearings, commute between home districts and the capitol and attend conferences or junkets across the state, nation and globe. Officials traveling on official state business can use aircraft that the Texas Department of Transportation maintains exclusively for this purpose. From January 2005 through December 2006, officials took 1,574 flights on state-maintained aircraft at a taxpayer cost of $1,019,237. Officials also finance hundreds of trips out of their general campaign funds. Finally, private special interests sometimes step forward to pay specific travel expenses for state candidates and officials.

This report analyzes travel gifts that special interests either gave to state candidates who were elected during the 2005-2006 election season or donated to sitting state officials who did not stand for election in 2006.¹ Most of the travel expenditures analyzed covered flights (with each leg of a round-trip journey usually reported as a separate expenditure). Yet the travel expenditures also include a smattering of hotel bills, cab fares, rental cars and reimbursements for miles driven in personal vehicles. For simplicity’s sake, this report refers to these varied travel expenditures as “travel gifts” or “trip gifts.” Researchers credited travel gifts benefiting an official’s staff or family to the corresponding official. During the studied period, 67 high-level officials enjoyed 323 travel gifts. Lobbyists gave 15 additional travel gifts to 14 other officials employed by state agencies for a total of 338 travel gifts.

Texas long has had an inadequate system for disclosing the travel costs of candidates and officials. Candidates traditionally have reported travel gifts as in-kind contributions on regular campaign contribution reports. These reports included the dates, values and donors of in-kind travel contributions but rarely reported the purpose or destination of a trip. Trips that candidates financed out of their own campaign funds often suffered these same limitations. Other times politicians utterly obfuscated trips by paying for them with credit cards and then improperly reimbursing themselves from campaign funds without itemizing the underlying expenses.

New rules that the Texas Ethics Commission implemented in January 2006 require candidates to provide more detailed disclosures for all out-of-state trips that they finance directly through their campaign accounts or receive as in-kind campaign contributions.² Yet these new reporting rules do not apply to the travel gifts that registered lobbyists give to candidates or officials Texas lobbyists report travel gifts separately in disclosures that identify the travelers and their destinations but few other details—including how much a lobbyist spent on the trip. House speaker campaigns follow still other filing rules. They provide a few details on in-kind travel contributions but provide minimal information on campaign-financed travel.³

The U.S. Congress has much stricter travel rules. Each time its members or their staff people return from a privately-funded trip they have 30 days to file a disclosure report. That report includes the travel dates, sponsors, purpose of the trip, destinations, estimates of the costs, names of the traveler and names of any accompanying family members (donors can only pay for one relative per trip). These federal reports must disclose cost subtotals for transportation, lodging, meals and other expenses. Federal lobbyists, lobby firms and foreign agents are prohibited from paying congressional travel expenses.

During its first month in January 2007, the new Democratic-controlled Congress tightened these rules further. New House rules: Prohibit any organization that employs lobbyists from paying for trips; Ban members from flying on private corporate jets; and Prohibit lobbyists from tagging along on any segment of congressional trips. The new House rules ban any gifts of any value from lobbyists and organizations that employ them. The Senate then overwhelmingly approved similar legislation, which is expected to be signed into law.⁴ Nonetheless lawmakers of both parties quickly figured out how to circumvent their own restrictions. They continue to invite lobbyists to join them at rock concerts, the Super Bowl, or expensive resorts. Rather than having lobbyists pay directly for these outings, the New York Times reported, lawmakers now direct lobbyists to make contributions to their campaign committees—which then use this money to pay for the lavish trips.⁵