Travel Anxiety
If some members of Congress felt uncomfortably singled out this week when information on privately funded travel by themselves and their staff was laid bare, they may soon get company. A database of all the trip information, compiled by the Center for Public Integrity, is about to be put online.
The Center analyzed some 25,000 trip disclosure documents covering nearly 23,000 trips taken from January 2000 through June 2005. Many of the trips, valued at a total of almost $50 million, were funded by companies, trade associations and nonprofit groups with issues before Congress. Most of the often-expensive jaunts — some 500 of them cost more than $10,000 and one costmore than $30,000 — were taken by staff members.
But the Center and its partners, American Public Media and Medill News Service, only released some of the information Monday, including a list of offices taking more than 200 trips and another list of offices where the trips were valued at $350,000 or more. In a week to three weeks, all the data on all the offices will be made available.
“We plan to have a searchable database online by the end of June,” said the Center’s acting executive director, Wendell Rawls. The list will include “everyone who has ever taken a privately funded trip in the last 5 1/2 years.”
The data will be searchable by office, destination and cost. What remains to be seen is whether the database can be maintained. The three organizations are seeking funding to hire staff to keep the database current.
