This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 11, 2011 - WASHINGTON - After a tornado struck Neosho, Mo., in May 2008, Missouri's U.S. senators boarded a private plane at an airport near Washington, D.C., and flew on short notice to their home state to view the damage, with stops in St. Louis and Neosho.
A couple of weeks later, Senate documents show, U.S. Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Christopher Kit Bond, R-Mo., each billed their Senate office accounts equal amounts for those flights -- two charges apiece, totaling $5,089 for the two senators.
The reimbursements were the same -- splitting the difference, a staffer recalls -- but there was one significant difference: The plane belonged to a firm, Sunset Cove Associates LLC, co-owned by McCaskill, her husband, Joseph Shepard and other investors.
Since she was sworn in as a senator in January 2007, McCaskill has used the Sunset Cove-owned plane for 89 trips, according to Senate office-expense records originally reported by Politico this week.
Even though there is no ban against using taxpayer funds for charter flights, the senator wrote a check to the U.S. Treasury this week for $88,828.91 to cover all funds that had been paid by her Senate office account for such flights -- including about $76,000 to Sunset Cove and the rest to another firm, Performance Aviation Inc., for the pilots' fees.
But then came another revelation: $1,220 of those taxpayer funds paid for McCaskill's March 3, 2007, flight to Hannibal to attend Democrat Days. Because it was a political event, that flight seems to violate Senate rules. Stating that "official resources may only be used for official purposes," the Senate Ethics Manual says that it is "inappropriate to use any official resources to conduct campaign or political activities."
The Senate Ethics Committee, which can initiate inquiries based on a complaint or information provided by any group or person, had no comment Friday on whether it would look into the reimbursement for the Hannibal trip.
A spokeswoman for McCaskill, Maria Speiser, said Friday that "Sen. McCaskill is embarrassed by this mistake. Fortunately, all the expenditures related to the plane have already been repaid to the government." Speiser said the senator did not personally profit from the chartered flight arrangement.
But Republican critics pointed out that the repayment this week took place four years after the flight in question, and only after a Politico reporter asked about them. In a statement Friday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) said that "neither McCaskill nor her office have offered any evidence to support their second claim regarding any personal profits the senator or her family may have made from billing taxpayers for travel on their personal aircraft."
NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh called on McCaskill to "clear the air" by releasing the tax returns for the companies affiliated with the aircraft "so that taxpayers can see for themselves whether she personally profited from their money through this arrangement."
Since the controversy broke, McCaskill's two declared GOP rivals in her 2012 re-election effort -- former state Treasurer Sarah Steelman and St. Louis lawyer Ed Martin -- have sent out fundraising appeals that focused on the controversy. Steelman wrote: "While Sen. McCaskill talks about cracking down on congressional travel and eliminating waste, fraud and abuse, she is letting the taxpayers help pay for her jet."
Martin also set up a special website: www.airclaire.com.
What Bond, Illinois Senators Spent
While McCaskill's charter flights are under scrutiny because of the family-owned plane, a Beacon review of the Senate office spending over the past three years found that her overall travel expenses -- as well as her total office spending -- has been lower than that of other Missouri and Illinois senators.
In each of the fiscal years 2010, 2009 and 2008, McCaskill and her staff spent less on travel than did former Sen. Christopher Bond and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., as well as former Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., during the full year he served. McCaskill also spent less overall and returned more unspent Senate funding to the Treasury than did the others during that time frame.
For the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2010, for example, Bond's office spent $184,545 on travel while McCaskill's office spent $94,600 (minus part of the check she wrote this week). In Illinois, Durbin's office spent $104,840 on travel and Burris' office spent $179,364.
That same fiscal year -- the most recent available in Senate records -- McCaskill's office also returned the most unspent money to the federal government: $622,457 unspent versus Bond's $164,157, Durbin's $417,176 and Burris' $91,249.
In all, Speiser said that McCaskill has returned about $1.6 million in unspent Senate office funds to the Treasury since she took office in 2007 -- not including the $89,000 check she wrote this week. According to Senate records examined by the Beacon, McCaskill's office had returned more office funds over the past three years than the other senators from Missouri and Illinois.
While the Beacon did not check the flights of all 100 senators, a quick comparison indicated that McCaskill's expenses for such travel was in the middle range for a relatively large state.
For example, Bond's office spent more than $100,000 on travel in just six months between October 2008 and March 2009, according to a survey by Politico. Most of Bond's Missouri charter flights in recent years have been with Jefferson City Flying Service Inc., a firm in which he said Friday through a spokeswoman that he has no personal financial interest.
That Politico survey found that the highest Senate travel budgets during those six months were run up by Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, who each spent more than $140,000 for charter flights and other travel in that half of the fiscal year.
By comparison, McCaskill's office travel expenses were $108,618 for the entire 2009 fiscal year, according to Senate records.