JUNEAU — Alaska lawmakers accepted nearly $250,000 in free trips and gifts last year, taking far-flung travels to China and Ireland as well as resort towns in Colorado and South Carolina.
Trips funded with other people's money are among the perks that come with being in the Legislature, where the total value of all travel gifts last year exceeded $4,000 per member, though about one-third of lawmakers reported none at all.
Among the top recipients:
• Rep. Charisse Millett, R-Anchorage and the House Majority leader, reported more than $21,000 in gifted travel to nine states. She reported a $3,200 trip paid by the nonprofit, state-supported Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, to accept an honor in Philadelphia; a $1,500 trip to a Phoenix conference hosted by the conservative group GOPAC; and a $1,900 trip to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, for a women in government leadership conference sponsored by technology and financial services companies like Oracle and Intuit.
• Rep. Lance Pruitt, R-Anchorage, reported $29,800 in travel, including a trip to the Chinese cities of Beijing, Chongqing, and Shanghai; a $4,200 study tour of Turkey; and $9,700 in travel to New Orleans and Aspen, Colorado, as part of an Aspen Institute fellowship for young political leaders.
• Rep. Geran Tarr, D-Anchorage, reported $11,600 in free travel, including three trips to Washington, D.C. One was for a conference hosted by the State Innovation Exchange, a new group that bills itself as the Democratic alternative to the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council.
The trips didn't directly cost the state money, but the free travel isn't all free: Several of the groups that paid for lawmakers' travel collect substantial membership fees from the Legislature each year. Other trips were funded by organizations backed by corporate interests that are registered to lobby Alaska lawmakers.
The National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan policy and research group, paid for $42,000 in travel by lawmakers and staff to New York, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and part of Pruitt's trip to Turkey. The group collected $107,000 in dues from the Alaska Legislature this year.
Other groups with interests before the Legislature spent heavily to educate and influence lawmakers. The Alaska Oil and Gas Association, the oil industry trade group, joined with several oil companies to put on a tour of infrastructure and new development on the North Slope for seven lawmakers and a staffer, with a total value of $60,000.
The Kenai River Sportfishing Association, a group that promotes conservation and also does sharp-elbowed advocacy in Juneau on behalf of its sportfishing members, spent nearly $25,000 to bring 17 lawmakers to an annual event, the Kenai River Classic. Several lawmakers brought their spouses and reported gifts of guided fishing, meals and gear like jackets and gloves, with Millett, Pruitt, Anchorage Democratic Rep. Andy Josephson and Senate President Kevin Meyer, an Anchorage Republican, each saying the value they received was $2,800.
Legislators who attended the events on the North Slope and the Kenai Peninsula said they were meant to be educational, and dismissed the idea that they could be influenced by the gifts.
"If anybody thought that a jacket is going to change my vote, they're sorely confused," said Rep. Lynn Gattis, R-Wasilla, who attended the Kenai River Classic with her husband, Rick, reporting gifts worth $1,900. "I think people know fundamentally where I stand. You can give me all the jackets from the other side of the world — it's not going to change how I vote."
Some Kenai Peninsula residents, however, resent what they said was the captive audience that KRSA gets with lawmakers at the annual event, saying the group distorts the state's political process and pushes for decisions that favor fishing guides over recreational and commercial fishermen.
"They use politics rather than science to try to get what they can to garner improvements for those people in that industry," said Dwight Kramer, a board member of a fishermen's coalition that staged a floating protest of the Kenai River Classic last year outside the home of KRSA board member Bob Penney. "That's how they get what they want out of the process — either the legislative process or the Board of Fish process. By basically buying votes."
The House and Senate released their latest rounds of gift disclosures earlier this month.
Under state law, lawmakers are barred from receiving gifts worth more than $250, but there's an exception for travel if it's primarily to gather information "on matters of legislative concern."
Under those rules, legislators embark on all manner of excursions.
The most expensive gift
Pruitt reported the single most expensive gift, with his $12,800 trip to China as part of a bipartisan "rising stars" delegation. He said he promoted Alaska fish products and gained new insights into untapped Asian tourism markets — so much, he said, that he cut less state tourism promotion funding in one of his committee budgets than he otherwise might have.
"Every person, from the children in the middle schools, would say, 'Alaska, you have the aurora, right?'" Pruitt said in an interview. "I came back with kind of a renewed appreciation that we need to be doing a better job."
Pruitt said his trip was coordinated by Fontheim International — a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying and government relations firm that counts companies like Gap, Fruit of the Loom, Cargill and Microsoft as its clients.
He said he didn't know where the money for his China visit came from.
Anchorage Sen. Berta Gardner, the Democratic minority leader, rode on an Alaska Tanker Co. vessel from Valdez to Washington state. ATC is partly owned by BP. She said the trip gave her new insights into the company's safety practices, which include meditation sessions, and also won over her husband, an oil company skeptic.
Senate President Kevin Meyer, R-Anchorage, went to Paris with a forum of senate presidents that's funded by big companies like Coca-Cola, Pfizer, and Wal-Mart.
And Rep. Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham, was flown by his local school district to the village of Koliganek for the opening of a new school.
A large portion of lawmakers' trips, however, were to events hosted by groups to which the Legislature pays membership fees. That includes NCSL, as well as the the Council of State Governments and the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region, or PNWER.
The Legislature drew attention last year when it spent more than $90,000 in public money to send dozens of lawmakers and staff to NCSL's annual conference in Seattle, as legislative leaders were calling for Gov. Bill Walker's administration to reduce state agency travel because of a budget crisis.
The gift disclosures released this month show that NCSL helped pay for lawmakers' travel to the Seattle conference, as well as nearly two dozen trips by legislators and staff to conferences in other locations on jobs, drone aircraft, natural gas policy and education.
NCSL is funded not just by states' membership fees, but also by a foundation that counts big corporations as some of its major sponsors. They include AT&T, Wal-Mart, and tobacco company Reynolds American.
The state also pays annual membership fees of $75,000 for the Council of State Governments and $42,000 for PNWER, though a preliminary House budget this year proposes to cut the PNWER funding in half.
Gardner, the Senate minority leader, went to two PNWER energy institutes last year in Washington state and Washington, D.C that were valued more than $10,000 in total. The institutes are sponsored by big oil companies like Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.
Gardner doesn't sit on the Senate's energy or resources committees, and she hasn't sponsored any energy legislation in the current two-year session. But, she said: "I would absolutely defend that the state should be part of the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region and what they do."
The curriculum for the conferences, Gardner said, was rigorous and gave her a "deeper understanding" of energy issues.
"My constituents understand that I should take every opportunity to learn about the issues that are so important to this state," she said.
As for the paid-for trips to the North Slope and the Kenai River Classic, lawmakers said that firsthand experience helps them set better policy for two of the state's big economic engines.
'I hate flying'
The trip to Prudhoe Bay and surrounding developments is held every year or two, and it's aimed at giving lawmakers involved in oil and gas policy a better sense of how the industry works, said Kara Moriarty, the president of AOGA.
"They can recollect from their memory, 'Oh, yeah, that's what that rig looks like,'" Moriarty said in a phone interview. "It's just a much different appreciation for the state's largest industry."
Attendees this year were all members of the Republican-led majorities in the House and Senate with the addition of Dan Ortiz, an independent from Ketchikan who caucuses with Democrats. The trip included a flight to Deadhorse, followed by a bus to Italian oil company ENI's Nikaitchuq field, then rides on a boat and helicopter to other developments before spending a night at a camp at the Endicott oil field.?
Among the participants was Rep. Ben Nageak, a Democrat from Barrow who grew up on the North Slope and who served on the North Slope Borough Assembly and as North Slope Borough mayor.
Moriarty said invitations are issued largely based on committee memberships, not partisanship, and a list of lawmakers who were invited to the North Slope tour since 2009 includes two of the biggest advocates for steeper oil taxes, Sen. Bill Wielechowski and Rep. Les Gara, both Anchorage Democrats.
One of this year's attendees, Edgmon, said he jumped at the opportunity to take the trip, "given the importance of oil to Alaska's economy." He said he'd recommend the trip to any other legislator — as well as to the reporter who asked him about it.
"Just the sheer effort it took to put all that into place, it's mind-boggling," he said in an interview. "And you have to see it."
Asked how the visit would impact his consideration of proposed oil tax policy changes expected to come before the House Finance Committee, on which Edgmon sits, he responded: "I think the more informed you are, the better decisions you make."
But, he added: "I'm a pretty independent guy, so I vote the way I think is the right way to vote."
Not all lawmakers, however, said they found value in the trips inside and outside the state.
Sen. Click Bishop, R-Fairbanks, reported no gifts in 2015. He consults with colleagues who do go out of state on work business, and reads at least five newspapers a day, he said.
While he gets invited on trips, Bishop added, "there's nothing that's come into my wheelhouse that I need to travel on."
And, he said: "I hate flying."
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Rep. Les Gara went on an AOGA tour of North Slope facilities. Gara was invited but did not attend.