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Gov. Scott Walker spent $41,935 on taxpayer-funded air travel in his first six weeks in office according to state records. The story, reported in the Green Bay Press Gazette on Tuesday, led to complaints from labor unions decrying the governor’s expenditures. But a check by NewsBuzz finds Walker’s travel expenses are actually below those of predecessors, particularly Republican Tommy Thompson.

“Even as he tried to balance the budget on the backs of working families … Walker … has been spending tens of thousands of dollars to fly around the state,” The AFL-CIO blog complained.

Wisconsin Air Service Beechcraft King Air 350

True, Walker traveled 5,279 miles between Jan. 1 and March 15, or the equivalent of eight round trips between Superior and Kenosha, but that’s still nothing compared to the high-flying ways of Gov. Thompson. In 1999-2000, his final two full years in office, Thompson racked up 160,417 miles in the state’s air fleet at a cost to taxpayers of $691,361.

But it was the fate of his successor, Scott McCallum, to draw the most attention for his air travel during his two years in office.  McCallum’s travels, and their accompanying expense, were criticized by then-Attorney General Jim Doyle in the Democrat’s successful campaign to replace him as governor in 2002.

The Doyle campaign charged that McCallum used the state planes for non-official business. An investigation by the state’s then-Ethics Board found the governor travelling to boys’ soccer tournaments in several states featuring one or the other of his two sons, often while en route to other destinations. The governor’s sons, a girlfriend and even the governor’s father travelled on state planes, often with the barest pretext of official activity. (The senior McCallum, a veteran, accompanied his son to a veteran’s event, for example.)

In one instance, McCallum and his son were flown to a weeklong soccer tournament in Colorado Springs and picked up upon its completion.  McCallum claimed this was official state business and non-reimbursable because he had met for an hour and a half with Dr. James Dobson, the head of the conservative Focus on the Family organization, where the discussion, somewhat prophetically, “focused on how to counteract the increasing ties between the teachers union and the Democratic party on a national level.”

tommy thompson

As the Doyle campaign kept up its attacks, McCallum paid $3,715 to reimburse the state for his and his family’s personal travel. Even so, such things as a July 6, 2001 father-son fishing trip were paid for by the public. “Was promoting tourism … Zach was on television with him,” the governor told Ethics investigators.

Perhaps because of his public criticism of McCallum’s extensive travels, and his later move to sell eight of the state’s planes (“we don’t need a state airline,” he said in a commercial), Gov. Doyle generally escaped scrutiny of his air travels while governor.

But a 2010 study by WKOW entitled, “Frequent Flyers: Are state airplanes worth it?” found that Doyle, while not as frequent a flyer as his predecessors, still managed to get around:

“During a 20-month period from 2008 to 2009, Doyle flew the Madison-Milwaukee route 36 times and the Madison-Green Bay route 27 times … ‘Perks and privileges that come from high office are like a drug,’ said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. ‘Most people wouldn’t dream of flying from Madison to Milwaukee.’”

Still, in his most high-flying year, 2007, Doyle logged 34,590 miles in the air, compared to 51,065 for McCallum in 2001 and a whopping 82, 590 for Thompson in 1999. Even at his current pace, Walker is unlikely to best Thompson or even McCallum, although he might surpass Doyle. Of course, in the palmy days of Thompson, the cost per mile was not much higher than $4; it now exceeds $7.

scott mccallum

While some, like McCabe, feel air travel removes the governor from the ground dwellers who elected him, others on both sides of the political spectrum seem to agree air travel is a great time saver, even if it now costs $7.15 per mile for use of one of the state’s four airplanes.

Indeed, Wisconsin’s air fleet is operated by the Department of Administration’s Enterprise Operations Wisconsin Air Services, which uses the motto “Purveyors of Time,” observing that “time is our most precious non-renewable asset.” The aircraft are available to a number of state agencies and have been used for purposes as disparate as gubernatorial flights or the travels of a college sports team. Costs are based on actual operating expenses and are billed to the appropriate state agencies or departments. The expenses for the governor’s travels come from the state Department of Transportation budget.

In Missouri, the state’s House of Representatives stripped $500,000 from the travel budget of Democratic Governor Jay Nixon in retaliation for his withholding an equal sum from school lunch funding. Nixon has spent $400,000 in his air travels since taking office in January 2009, making 254 trips, all but seven of which he charged to the accounts of state agencies other than his own. He was accused of a lack of transparency in his travel expenses.

In Mississippi, Governor Haley Barbour was criticized for spending $500,000 on air travel since taking office in 2007. Critics noted he apparently was mixing business with pleasure, saying that Barbour, a likely Republican presidential candidate in 2012, could meet with an elected official for a minute and claim the travel expense as legitimate. For example, Barbour met with billionaire casino owner Steve Wynn in Las Vegas, in a trip charged to the taxpayers on the basis that it was a “refueling stop.”

For his part, Walker’s office says the governor’s travels are essential to his securing 250,000 jobs for Wisconsinites by the end of his four-year term. All of Walker’s travel was on official business, according to spokesman Cullen Werwie.

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