021010 PM Update

Air Date:02/10/2010

Bills concerning the temporary cutting of legislative travel and legislative pay were voted on by lawmakers today.
 Representative Shantel Krebs, a Republican from Renner proposed both bills. The first bill would freeze out-of-state travel for legislators. According to Krebs  legislators can use technology to participate in many of out of state conferences and meetings.
 
 “We have the opportunity to utilize these national meeting via webcam and via Skype and via teleconference. I have been appointed to the NCSL Transportation committee. I have attented four meetings of the NCLS Transportation committee via teleconference. I attended these national meetings sitting in my office at home,” says Krebs.
 
Representative Rich Engels of Hartford spoke in favor of the motion for financial reason but also shared this view that the bill would take care of the lack of accountability and transparency concerns that  some state lawmakers  have abused out of state travel.
 
 “We’ve heard that legislators sometime use these trips as vacations. They’ve not attended the meetings. And there has been no accountability for them. They get their travel paid for if they attend the meetings or not,” says Engels.
 
Representative Tim Rave of Baltic disagreed with the comments made by Engels and argued that transparency is not an issue.  
 
 “Lack of transparency. I believe that I read on the front page of our local media outlets. They had pictures and everything and names of legislators and how much they’ve spent on travel. That information is available obviously because it’s on the front page of a major newspaper,” says Rave.
 
The committee killed the measure. Also killed was a bill brought by Rep. Krebs that would have cut the state lawmakers salaries by 30%. Representative Eldon Nygaard of Vermillion presented a similar measure that would have also included a 5% cut to state employee and state officers who make over 80 thousand dollars a year. Both measures died in committee.

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