State lawmaker spending costs still unclear
10:00 PM PDT on Monday, August 29, 2011
SACRAMENTO - Does Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries' office payroll rank among the highest in the Assembly, as shown in the Assembly expenditure data for the first seven months of 2011?
Or is the Lake Elsinore Republican's payroll actually among the lowest, based on employee salary data available on the Assembly website?
Inland Southern California lawmakers largely have been on the sidelines during a weeks-long squabble over legislative office expenditures that has led to scrutiny of how lawmakers' offices spend their money.
Jeffries said his office has nothing to hide. He and other GOP lawmakers, meanwhile, scoff at the idea that any Republican office spends more than that of someone in the Democratic majority.
"The expenditure of public dollars should be fully disclosable and obtainable by anybody at any time," Jeffries said. "Why it's been kept in this cloud of secrecy ... is beyond me."
That cloud largely remains in place following Assembly and Senate leaders' release late Friday afternoon of updated expenditure data.
The data, in the same format as what's released every fall for the previous legislative year, leave unclear the extent to which lawmakers benefit from party caucus and committee spending.
In the new Senate data, for example, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dutton is listed as having 2010 office expenditures of $1.2 million -- almost a half-million dollars more than the $709,344 attributed to Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, who controls the upper house.
Dutton spokesman Larry Venus said the Rancho Cucamonga Republican accepted the figures for his office. Venus, however, called it impossible that "the Senate minority leader has expenditures twice as high as the Senate pro tem."
The office expenditure controversy began when Assembly Speaker John Perez cut the budget of Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada Flintridge, alleging Portantino was spending too much money.
Portantino claimed he actually was being punished because he voted against the June budget package. Monday, Portantino criticized the Assembly data as misleading.
"The figures released by Assembly leaders make it impossible to determine what lawmaker's real budgets are and what lawmakers are spending," he said in a statement.
As the standoff continued, some lawmakers -- all Republicans -- began releasing their own office budgets, including Assemblyman Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga.
Records posted on Morrell's Assembly website show he has averaged less than $18,000 in monthly spending so far this year. He is on pace to have about $53,000 left over from his $263,000 base budget allocation.
Other Inland lawmakers have refused to release more detailed data.
"I'm not really sure what the information would be used for. Until I find that out, I won't be making a decision about releasing a budget," said Assemblywoman Wilmer Amina Carter, D-Rialto. Her office ranked 13th in total spending in the data released Friday.
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