**Please read the update to this thread**
I recently stumbled upon a site by the name of Legistorm. If you go to the site, you will discover that does strive to be “transparency’s sidekick” as an informative resources about congressional staff salaries and many other things.
As a sister site to our recently reviewed Richmond Sunlight, you can find all sorts of crazy things on Legistorm. You can learn about salaries of congressmen and their assistants, you can learn about trips they took and you learn that most expenses are not itemized and, I quote, “good faith estimates.”
While the good faith estimates opens a whole can of worms, I was searching around and apparently, you can see all tax payer money that has sent politicians on trips to Charlottesville.
You can also see who invited the politicians and the reason for the event. Take for instance a trip on May 22nd, 2005 in which Senator Evan Bayh spoke at the UVa Law Graduation Ceremony. He charged taxpayers $821.41 for this trip.
Shouldn’t UVa have paid for his trip, not the federal government? It seems like a waste of money to me and somehow doesn’t seem right.
Check out the list for yourself. You can see taxpayers have given politicians almost $100,000 to come to Charlottesville since 2000. What do you think? Did you find anything else interesting on the site?
Important Update: LegiStorm chimes in and lets us know that this trip and many others were paid for by the sponsor… although it isn’t very clear on the site. Sorry for the mixup!
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Tagged as: Charlottesville, Government, Politicians, UVA, waste
I wish I could make “good faith estimates” on my expense report. That last trip to Vegas would have been a lot cheaper.
I love good faith estimates.
Thanks for the mention of our site.
Two clarifications. One is that the trips currently shown on our site are privately financed travel. The sponsors of the trips are shown on our site. In the case of Sen. Bayh, it was the University of Virginia paying for that. We’ll consider how to change our site to make it clearer who is paying. Right now, the details of what this represents is buried on our About Trips page.
Another minor one is that we are not affiliated with Richmond Sunlight. Presumably the “sister site” comment was a reference to the fact that we are kindred spirits, not that we are related.
Oops, messed that one up!
Hey everyone look Thor made a mistake!
shhhhhhhhhhhhh