Power Trips: A look at privately sponsored trips for Senator DeWine, Congressman Brown and their staff

Power Trips, the Center for Public Integrity's (CPI) investigation into privately funded travel for Congressmen, Senators and their staff has added a searchable database to their site:

CPI's study found:

Over a 5½-year period ending in 2005, members of Congress and their aides took at least 23,000 trips — valued at almost $50 million — financed by private sponsors, many of them corporations, trade associations and nonprofit groups with business on Capitol Hill...

This post will look into the privately funded travel in the offices of Senator Mike DeWine (R) and Congressman Sherrod Brown (D); both candidates for the Ohio U.S. Senate seat in 2006.

Senator DeWine:

• Senator DeWine and his staff have a total of 34 trips registered in the privately funded travel database. The total reimbursement for the trips amounts to $71,559.
  
  
• The largest reimbursement ($7,447) was for a trip sponsored by the Congressional Economic Leadership Institute for Marjority Chief Counsel Pete Levitas for a trip to Brussels and Paris to meet with European union and foreign government officials regarding international aviation and other competition issues.
  
  
• Corporations that paid for trips for Senator DeWine's staff to travel include GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), SBC Communications, Medco Health Solutions Inc, Gilead Sciences, Sprint Corporation, Universal Leaf Tobacco, Comcast.
  
  GSK and Gilead were noted as the #1 and #3 companies, respectively, to sponsor at least 325 private congressional trips worth more than $614,000 since January 2000 to June 2005.
  
  
• Senator DeWine's 5 personal reimbursements warrant a closer look:
  
  All the trips were associated with what appears (from the dates) to be an annual fundraiser for the nonprofit organization Hands Together:

  Hands Together carries out its mission through projects and programs aimed at improving the quality of life for the very poor - primarily in Haiti.

  Three of the trips were reimbursed for the nice round number of $2,500. All five trips resulted in a total reimbursement of $11,991. Each reimbursement was submitted with a "Good Faith Estimate" of the expenses incurred, as opposed to actual expenses. One would think that expenses submitted to a charity organization like Hands Together would be for actual expenses incurred so as to maximize the funds available for charity work.
  
  The sponsor for four of the trips was Umberto Fedeli, head of the Fedeli Group in Independence, Ohio (as per the 'Reimbursements to be made by' statement in the disclosure forms 1,2,3,4).
  
  On the Fedeli Group's website one will find 'In Umberto's Embrace', a profile of Mr. Fedeli written by the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2003. The profile describes Mr. Fedeli as a major Cleveland power broker and friend of Senators Voinovich and DeWine.

Congressman Sherrod Brown:

• Congressman Brown and his staff have a total of 32 trips registered in the privately funded travel database. The total reimbursement for the trips amounts to $109,521.
  
  
• The largest reimbursement ($9,016) was for a trip sponsored by the Aspen Institute for Congressman Brown for a trip to participate in conference on US-china relations. Where was the conference held? The disclousure form does not provide any detail on this conference's location. It simply states that the conference dates were from Mar. 29 - Apr. 7, 2002.
  
  
• Mr. Brown has been quite the globe trekker with privately funded trips; taking a 25 trips to far off jaunts like the Honolulu, Rome-Venice, Morelia, Mexico, Ukraine (Kiev and Luiv), Managua (Nicaraqua), Czech Republic (Prague), St Petersburg - Helsinki, Taipei and Moscow-Tomsk. All totaled, Mr. Brown's privately funded trips resulted in a reimbursement of $84,586.
  
  
• $84,586 and 25 trips privately funded trips in 5 1/2 years averages to $15, 379 per year in travel and almost 5 trips per year.

Related:

• Center for Public Integrity Study: Power Trips
• Congressman Rangel Takes Trip Sponsored by Cuban Government