Huckabee’s travels on state tab climbing
Posted on Sunday, February 12, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/145511/
Gov. Mike Huckabee has used state aircraft more than
1 700 times during his 9 / 2 years as governor. His 40 out-of-state trips in 2005 nearly doubled his instate flights and included 16 flights to Washington, more than twice the typical number of such trips during his previous years as governor. During his tenure, Huckabee has logged more than 1, 400 taxpayer-funded flight hours. His flights on state aircraft have cost the state $ 485, 062 since 2002, the first year state police kept detailed cost estimates. His frequent absences from Arkansas, coupled with the lieutenant governor’s absence for health treatment, have led to two legislative leaders filling in as acting governor about a dozen times over the past year.
Huckabee, a Republican, has a lot to be busy with, including things some say lend prestige to the state. He’s exploring whether to run for president in 2008, is chairman of the National Governors Association, has been promoting his weight-loss book, and has given numerous speeches across the country on health and other topics.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette analyzed 731 Arkansas State Police flight forms the newspaper obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request about flights taken on state aircraft by Huckabee, first lady Janet Huckabee, other Huckabee family members and members of Huckabee’s staff. With a few exceptions, the governor was a passenger on the flights.
One notable passenger with Huckabee was Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 2002 for a duck hunt in Poinsett County. Someone identified as “K. Rove” was on a 2004 flight to New Orleans. That presumably was Karl Rove, an aide to President Bush. The Republican Governors Association was meeting in New Orleans. Huckabee attended, and Rove was a speaker.
State law does not restrict use of the plane, according to the state Ethics Commission.
The purposes of Huckabee’s flights aren’t recorded on the forms or in other public records.
The words “official business” appear as boilerplate language on each flight form, but state police spokesman Bill Sadler declined to say whether the state police has a definition of “official business.” Nor do state police discuss how flights are judged to be “official business,” he said.
It’s the agency’s duty according to state law to provide security for the governor, said Sadler, and providing transportation is part of that.
NEIGHBORING GOVERNORS
The state aircraft the governor uses is a Beechcraft King Air 200 turboprop twin-engine. It’s a 10-seat 1982 model that cost the state $ 1. 4 million in 1997. Sadler said the plane also is used for business other than transporting the governor, such as flying investigators to out-ofstate interviews and taking officers to major crimes scenes.
For the five years before 1997 state police used a five-seat propeller plane that was more than three decades old.
State police said that during Gov. Bill Clinton’s tenure no state police aircraft was used by the governor because the state police had only a two-seat traffic enforcement plane.
Gov. Jim Guy Tucker used the five-seater. State police flight records for Tucker cover only July 1995 through May 1996. There were 47 flights. One was out of state, to a governors conference in Biloxi, Miss.
The Democrat-Gazette surveyed officials in surrounding states regarding state plane use by governors and found that policies vary.
Two governors — Rick Perry of Texas and Matt Blunt of Missouri, both Republicans — use campaign funds for flying. Citing Missouri’s budget problems, Blunt refuses to use a state plane for any flights. Perry has used a state plane only about five times in five years because he believes taxpayers shouldn’t pay for his travel.
In two other states, policies call for greater detail in record-keeping than Arkansas requires.
In Mississippi, Republican Gov. Haley Barbour must list in detail with the state’s finance department the state business each time he uses a state plane. Those records are public. However, he doesn’t have to list things he does on those trips that are unrelated to state business.
Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, keeps detailed records available to the public in his office on the official business for his trips on the state plane. Like Barbour, he doesn’t list every single event he attends.
Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat, has access to a state plane, and records are kept with the Department of Public Safety for each flight. But an official in that state wouldn’t say how much detail is required on those forms. The office of Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, didn’t respond.
SECURITY LAW Huckabee wouldn’t be interviewed by the Democrat-Gazette for this article. His spokesman, Alice Stewart, said he declined because in the past this reporter and Democrat-Gazette Political Editor Bill Simmons have “edited, twisted and distorted” his remarks. He would answer questions about his plane use only in a live public broadcast, Stewart said.
Last fall, Arkansas Times, a weekly newspaper in Little Rock, wrote about the governor’s 2005 trips. Huckabee refused to talk to the Times, later telling a television audience the Times had “never been responsible with the truth whenever it relates to me.” The Times had raised questions about Huckabee’s use of the state plane and about his refusal to answer its questions.
As the legal basis for transporting the governor by airplane, state police cited Arkansas Code Annotated 12-8-108 : “The Department of Arkansas State Police shall be responsible for the safety and security of the : Governor and his or her family ; Lieutenant Governor and his or her family ; Governor’s Mansion and mansion grounds ; and State Capitol building and grounds. The department is authorized to assign officers of the department in such numbers and to such locations as is necessary to carry out the responsibility imposed on the department by this section.”
In 1997, the governor issued a policy on when he would use the state plane and submitted it to the Ethics Commission for an advisory opinion.
That policy said he wouldn’t use it “solely” for political or religious purposes. He also wouldn’t use it for “non-official out of state trips” or for personal trips if they were “solely related to outside business or investment activities.”
The commission issued an opinion citing A. C. A. 12-8-108 and said it was “not willing to compromise or dilute” the governor’s security.
It found the governor’s policy acceptable but said it was willing to “pursue appropriate enforcement action if the policies are abused.”
Commission Executive Director Graham Sloan said he knows of no such action taken since that opinion was issued.
Rex Nelson, Huckabee’s spokesman at the time, said after that opinion came down that in cases of flights in which the purpose was both official state business and campaigning, the governor probably would reimburse the state police for the flight.
Last week state police spokesman Sadler said Huckabee has never reimbursed state police for any flight costs nor offered any partial reimbursement if part of the trip didn’t pertain to official state business.
On his Jan. 5 Arkansas Educational Television Network show Huckabee was questioned about his trip last fall on a state plane to Washington. There he did several things, including running a marathon. He said he participated in National Governors Association meetings, taped public service announcements, was interviewed, and met with people at the Discovery Health Channel to promote the Healthy America agenda of the governors’ group.
“So, I didn’t just use the state plane to fly to run a marathon,” he told AETN’s viewers.
Arkansas’ Constitution requires the lieutenant governor to be acting governor when the governor is out of state. But Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller has been in Seattle since September receiving medical treatment, so the duty has fallen to either Senate President Pro Tempore Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, or House Speaker Bill Stovall, DQuitman.
The constitutional provision is generally considered a technicality given modern communication methods. In October, Huckabee called it a “nonissue,” adding, “I’m clearly in command with what’s going on.”
THINGS HE DID News accounts give clues about some of what he does while on trips out of state. “I’ll have to start paying property taxes if I stay up there [in Washington ] any more,” Huckabee joked in an interview with Roll Call, a Washington political publication. The June 13, 2005, article about his presidential ambitions noted he had been to the nation’s capital three times in three weeks.
In January 2005, Huckabee’s band, Capitol Offense, played in Washington during festivities for President Bush’s inauguration at a ball put on by Free Republic, a conservative organization. State police flight records show a state airplane flew Huckabee, the first lady, a state police security officer and an unidentified staff member to Washington on Jan. 18 and returned Jan. 21. The inauguration was Jan. 20.
His other business in Washington in connection with flights on a state plane include : April 4, a keynote address to a national summit on health-care quality. June 15, appearances before two congressional committees and a governors’ association news conference regarding Medicaid funding issues facing states. June 8, honored by the American Running Association. June 2, appearance on CSPAN’s Washington Journal.
Also in 2005, there were records of three trips to Iowa involving Huckabee and one to New Hampshire, both key states in presidential primaries.
During the New Hampshire trip, he spoke to several Republican groups. He said that HBO paid for his flight there because he had appeared the previous night on Real Time with Bill Maher, a talk show in Los Angeles.
State records show that a state police plane was involved. It picked him up in New Hampshire Aug. 27 and flew him to Greensboro, Ga. — the site of a Southern Governors Association meeting — and then to Little Rock. The next day the plane returned to Greensboro and