An inside look at expenses for a session to convene

RICHMOND

The white minivan pulled up to Commonwealth Passenger Terminal last week and four tired-looking men hopped out.

They grabbed their bags and overcoats from the trunk and paced the few feet to their private turbo-prop plane, avoiding all those layers of time-consuming security found elsewhere at Richmond International Airport.

Within minutes, they were ready for a $985-an-hour flight to Southwest Virginia.

These aren’t CEOs from the state capital. They’re Virginia lawmakers. Two senators and two delegates, to be exact.

Their jaunt home is just another example of the costs of convening a General Assembly session in Capitol Square.

The state pays more than $1 million a year to transport, house and feed the 140 members of the House of Delegates and the Senate each session.

The costs – estimated this session at more than $1.2 million – grow thanks to rising mileage reimbursements and per-diems paid to lawmakers traveling in from the farthest reaches of the commonwealth.

“I’m due south of Detroit, ” said Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, whose 5½-hour drive home takes him through Tennessee. “A lot of people don’t realize that.”

Actually, they do.

“Oh, yeah,” joked Del. Sal Iaquinto, R-Virginia Beach. “We’ve got it much easier.”

 The kitty for lawmaker spending isn’t endless, mind you.

Legislators get a set per-diem for the time they spend in Richmond. This year’s session is scheduled for 60 days. Every other year, the session is supposed to last 46 days.

In the House, for the second year in a row, the daily rate was $135 for housing and food, said Bruce Jamerson, the House clerk. In the Senate, where the per-diem has risen each year since 2004, it’s $169 , said Susan Clarke Schaar, clerk of the Senate.

There are no expense accounts and no receipts to submit. Lawmakers get their checks every week during floor sessions, Jamerson said. Mileage reimbursements are handled after the session. The money doesn’t count the roughly $18,000 salaries lawmakers receive, the $1,250 monthly allowance for district offices or any money for aides and staff.

Lawmakers say the money doesn’t go as far as it sounds.

“Even though you get a per-diem, it costs a whole lot more,” said Del. Charles Carrico Sr., R-Grayson. “By the time you rent a motel room, pay for your meals … it just kind of gets into a costly issue.”

Not that anyone would dare complain unless asked about it by a newspaper reporter.

“We volunteer for that,” said John Welch, a former delegate from Virginia Beach. “If anybody’s whining, tell them … go back home and enjoy your retirement.”

Both houses pay mileage for one trip home a week and that only applies to people who live at least 50 miles from the Capitol.

Those closer to Richmond get no mileage pay and – since they might not even need a hotel room – their per-diem check is taxed. Delegates and senators outside the 50-mile circle receive their money tax-free, a system governed by IRS guidelines.

Welch went home more than some others, he said, because he needed to earn a living as a chiropractor.

Del. Robert Marshall, R-Prince William, said he’s driven home every night for about 10 years, preferring to be in his district and with his family. It also means he can spend his weekly check on whatever he wants.

Gas is one option. His commute is 196 miles a day. A thousand miles a week. For nine weeks.

He doesn’t mind that he’s not in town for dinners with Richmond power brokers or the back-room social scene one political blog describes as “where legislators meet to smoke cigars and discuss policy.”

“I’m here to interact with citizens, not lobbyists,” Marshall said. “To the extent I miss that, I don’t miss anything.”

So the Richmond-area legislators have it easiest, right?

“It’s kind of like the grass-is-greener syndrome,” said Del. Dwight Jones, a Richmond Democrat who works as a Baptist minister in the city. “I wish I was away so I could do this job.”

That’s why Del. Jennifer McClellan, another capital city Democrat, took a two-month leave of absence from her job as an attorney for this year’s session. Between upcoming nuptials and the daily grind of the session, she “loves” going home every day.

Not to a rental in Shockoe Bottom – home to Sen. Ralph Northam, D-Norfolk – or a room at the Zagat-rated Jefferson Hotel, like Del. Harry R. “Bob” Purkey, R-Virginia Beach, booked.

“It’s a lot easier at the end of the day when you’re going home … instead of going back to a hotel room,” McClellan said . “It’s nice to sleep in your own bed.”

That brings us back to the plane. The commonwealth offers it as a service to legislators representing Southwest Virginia.

“They’re closer to … other state capitals out there than Virginia’s,” said Schaar, the Senate clerk. “If they drive every weekend, you’re barely home before you’re turning around again. They’re so far removed from Richmond.”

Flights home for legislators were grounded from 2004 through 2006, a casualty of tight budgets. They resumed last year, and, including last week’s takeoff , there have been nine in-session flights since, according to the clerks of both chambers.

The plane is a King Air 350, with room for nine people, if they bring luggage. It only flies when at least four delegates or senators request it. And only those Assembly members who live in Roanoke or west are eligible to board.

Lawmakers such as Del. Joseph Johnson Jr., D-Abingdon, who calls flying “the only way to go.” A longtime delegate, he didn’t run for re-election in 1969 because the commute was too much for a man with two young children. He didn’t come back until his children were grown, in 1990. “Then, we didn’t have interstate highways,” Johnson said. “It took me about 12 or 13 hours to drive to Richmond from Abingdon. Through all the small towns. Railroad crossing, you’d have to stop. Traffic lights, you’d have to stop. It was a slow go.”

Now it’s an hour’s flight.

Just not for Kilgore, the General Assembly member who lives farthest from Richmond, but is still more than an hour’s drive from Virginia’s western line.

Kilgore doesn’t use the state plane because he sits on a panel that meets Friday afternoons. So whenever that ends, he drives home in his new Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo – he traded in his old Jeep after two years and 130,000 miles.

Sure, he could get better mileage in something smaller, but …

“Comfort is primary,” he said. “That’s a long drive.”

Richard Quinn, (757) 222-5119, richard.quinn@pilotonline.com