This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 5, 2011 - After days of denying that he did anything wrong, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder announced this morning that he's paying back to the state the $35,000 that he had used from his office funds to pay for hotel stays in the St. Louis area during his six years in office.
The payment was announced at a hastily called news conference in the state Capitol, a Kinder aide said.
Kinder also confirmed weekend reports, initially by social writer/blogger Jerry Berger, that he was now renting a condominium in the area and using campaign money to pay for it.
Kinder, a Republican, also is using his campaign money to cover his repayment to the state for the hotel stays, which had been the brunt of a weekend news story in the Post-Dispatch. The newspaper linked many of the stays to various political or personal events that Kinder had attended. Kinder's staff has maintained that all of the hotel stays were primarily the result of official business, but that Kinder often also attended other events or meetings while in town.
But using campaign money could set Kinder up for a new round of political headaches. Campaign money is not to be used for personal expenses, and has gotten some state officials in trouble when the Missouri Ethics Commission found them guilty of doing so. (Just ask former state Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-O'Fallon, who was accused of using campaign money for personal expenses, such as buying a truck and paying taxes.)
The Missouri Democratic Party filed the ethics complaint that got Davis into hot water and may be about to do the same thing to Kinder as a result of his decision to use campaign money for the $35,000. That's because some of the stays have been linked to personal events, such as attending a wedding.
Kinder has declined to speak to the Beacon, but he did email a statement late Monday in which he reinterated his stance -- repeated on various radio stations in recent days -- that "the story in the Post-Dispatch was an invention of Jay Nixon's operatives."
Kinder has been expected to challenge Gov. Jay Nixon in 2012 and now finds himself under fire for the same type of behavior that he has for months accused the governor of embracing.
In his own defense, Kinder has cited two state audits -- conducted by Democrats Claire McCaskill and Susan Montee during their tenures as state auditor, and both issued by Montee -- that did not cite any problems with his hotel records. Montee's audit late last year did mention concerns, however, that many of Kinder's official expenditures were not reviewed by someone else in his office before being submitted to the Office of Administration.
"Neither of Montee's audits criticized my lodging stays. Nor did Montee's audits criticize my reimbursement for meals, all of which were at or below the accepted per diem or federally approved allowance," Kinder wrote. "Susan Montee is now the chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party. For some reason, the Post-Dispatch refused to mention these crucial facts in their story."
Kinder also repeated his primary defense: that he spends far less traveling around the state than Nixon, who has spent about $400,000 on state plane flights over the past two years. Nixon has spent little on hotel stays because he generally flies or drives home.
The Republican jabs at Nixon appear to have prompted the governor to travel more by car in recent weeks, although the state GOP disputes it.
Montee has so far declined comment, although the state Democratic Party has pounded at Kinder since the story broke. Today, the state party's new executive director, Matt Teter, asserted that "because Kinder has refused to make all of the documents relating to these trips public, there has been no independent oversight."
Referring to Kinder's use of campaign money, Teter said, "Peter Kinder just doesn't get it. While it's certainly wrong to use public money to finance political events, it's equally wrong for Kinder to use taxpayer money to finance an extravagant personal lifestyle. It's now clear that Peter Kinder will do anything to continue attending fancy parties and swanky events, as long as he doesn't have to pay for it himself. While Peter Kinder would like to brush six years of extravagant behavior under the rug and pretend it didn't happen, instead he just opened the door to new legal and ethical questions."
Even the national Democratic Governors Association, which generally hasn't weighed in on Missouri contests, couldn't resist getting involved. "Rather than coming clean about how many of his 329 trips at luxury 5-star hotels and casinos in St. Louis were not related to state business, (Kinder) has defiantly accused the media of conducting a witch hunt and said that his frequenting of the Four Seasons reflected his commitment to the people of St. Louis," the DGA said in a derisive statement.
Meanwhile, the state GOP jumped in this afternoon by resurrecting its old jabs at Nixon over those plane flights.
"Lt. Gov Kinder has gone above and beyond by reimbursing the state more than $35,000 to cover the cost of official, audited, and approved hotel stays over the past five years," the state GOP said. "Lt. Gov. Kinder did this so that no question may be raised as to where he stands -- and has always stood -- on government waste and excessive spending...We call on Gov. Nixon to do the same thing for his travel expenses. Gov. Nixon has spent nearly as much on air travel during the first two months of 2011 than Lt. Governor Kinder spent in five years on travel expenses."
