A 4-day trip for 60: only $57,000

Send 60 lawmakers and legislative staff members to New Orleans for four days for a conference? It sounds like a recipe for a taxpayer-funded bacchanalia in a year when extravagant trips by state bureaucrats have caused a stir.

However, expense reimbursements for the July trip show that the taxpayers spent less than $57,000 to send 60 people to a summit of the National Conference of State Legislators. Legislators paid many of their own expenses during the four-day trip, including portions of their hotel bills. They stuck to a strictly enforced limit on dinner and flew coach to New Orleans.

Legislators who went on the trip said they spent much of their time in conference sessions and seminars.

"I was working," said Rep. Dan Blue, a Raleigh Democrat, who received $356 in taxpayer money for the trip. "I did go by the casino but didn't spend any money."

"I was not going to fancy restaurants or shopping," said Rep. Tricia Cotham, a Charlotte Democrat who said she saved for months to pay for her portion of the trip. "I found a McDonald's. I wasn't living the life."

House Speaker Joe Hackney is president of the national organization, which connects members of state legislatures and lobbies Congress on behalf of the states.

He said the state's delegation included several people who were giving presentations. Staff members and lawmakers get a lot from the trip, Hackney said, just by talking to their counterparts in other states.

"I think continuing education ought to be something that legislators do," Hackney said.

Cotham, in her first term, said she attended sessions on family issues, education and energy.

"It really is a great way to learn what other states are doing," she said.

Rules are strict

As for travel expenses, Hackney said, the legislature has strict rules in place, and each reimbursement request goes through two layers of review. Hotel bills for lawmakers are limited to the rate paid by the federal government. For travel in New Orleans, the $100-a-night reimbursement covered only half the nightly rate at the downtown hotels. Meals were typically limited to $26.

"I do think people try to be responsible," said Rep. Martha Alexander, a Charlotte Democrat who received $562 in travel money for the conference.

The expenses for the New Orleans trip are a study in frugality compared to recent trips funded by the state Department of Cultural Resources.

In 2007, first lady Mary Easley and an assistant went to France for a cultural exchange trip. A year later, Easley, the secretary of the state's Department of Cultural Resources, the art museum director and others went to St. Petersburg, Russia, and Estonia for another exchange trip. The two trips cost taxpayers $110,000. An audit of the two European trips found that about 40 percent of the money spent was unreasonable or unallowable.

When the legislature convenes in January, it will face a revenue shortfall of $1.6 billion or more.

"In retrospect, with the revenue we don't have at the state level, you wish that a smaller contingent would have gone," said Rep. Paul "Skip" Stam of Apex, the House Republican leader, who did not attend the conference. But he said such experiences are valuable.

"It's not a big party," he said. "They go out and work and learn how to do things better."