Kathy Groob exposes Jack Westwood's excess

Here's a press release just issued by Kathy Groob for State Senate:

Groob Calls on Westwood to Explain Excessive Travel on Taxpayer's Dime

While Kentucky continues to experience an economic downturn, Jack Westwood has continued to travel on junkets across the country at taxpayer expense. "While Jack Westwood calls himself a fiscal conservative, he's been spending an excessive amount of taxpayer dollars on trips to conferences," said Kathy Groob. "The average number of legislator trips is a couple or three per year and Jack Westwood took eight trips in 2007. It looks to me that Jack Westwood has taken every perk he can while Kentucky's economy is in decline."

Westwood's eight trips in 2007 were to places like Amelia Island, Boca Raton, Hilton Head and Orlando. Westwood has spent 156 days in out-of-state conferences and has taken 41 legislative trips during his tenure in the Senate. Taxpayers pay legislators salaries for attending conferences along with reimbursement for airfare, hotels and meals.

Westwood has received $48,577 in travel salary and expense reimbursement while serving in the Senate. This is in addition to the normal legislator salary received for serving in an official capacity.

18 of Westwood’s out-of-state trips were to ExxonMobil-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conferences.

Westwood’s most expensive trip was to Seattle in 2004 for the American Legislative Exchange Council’s seven-day conference. That trip cost taxpayers $3,302.44. The American Legislative Exchange Council is not part of the bi-partisan National Conference of State Legislators but rather is a right-wing conservative organization that pushes legislation that favors big business and rollbacks to environmental regulations. ALEC is one of the most well-funded industry front groups with annual revenues in excess of $5 million. Westwood has attended 18 ALEC conferences since 1999.

Campaign finance watchdog organizations have said that ALEC promotes legislation to benefit its corporate sponsors. Since 1998, ALEC has received over $1,245,700 from ExxonMobil to help weaken environmental regulation and stifle efforts to deal with climate change.