Pricey plane tickets for government officials usually unjustified, report says

WASHINGTON -- A new federal report has found that two-thirds of the first- and business-class flights taken for work by government officials are either improper or unjustified.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) study of 53,000 premium-class airline tickets, scheduled to be released today, found that 67 percent were not warranted. Investigators said that translates into $146 million in high-cost tickets paid for by taxpayers.

The report was requested by Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who has long been using his position on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to spotlight abuses in government travel.

The issue first came to light in 2003, when a previous government audit discovered that Pentagon officials routinely booked top-dollar premium-class tickets rather than flying coach.

Subsequent audits found similar abuses in the State Department, which also had failed to reclaim $6 million in unused airline tickets.

New reporting requirements in the Defense Department have curbed abuses, Coleman said. The "bad news," he said, is that the problem persists throughout the rest of the federal government.

Almost all of the reported abuse -- about 96 percent -- involves business-class tickets, which are not subject to the same public reporting requirements as first-class seats but can still cost five to 10 times more than coach fares.

Coleman, joining a bipartisan group of senators led by Susan Collins, R-Maine, is pushing legislation to expand first-class reporting requirements to business class.

"Transparency has resulted in significant change," said Coleman, who has been rebuffed in previous requests to the Office of Management and Budget to include business class in annual government reports. Under a bill wending its way through the Senate, new business-class reporting rules would take effect next year.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, looked at $230 million spent on 53,000 premium airline tickets between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006. It concluded that more than two-thirds of the trips did not qualify for premium-class tickets, meaning they were not properly authorized, were not of sufficient length, were not "mission critical" or did not meet other government criteria, which vary among different agencies.

Some agencies are exempt from federal travel regulations. The U.S. Postal Service, for example, permits members of its governing board to fly first class anywhere.

Government-wide, almost all the questionable trips involved overseas destinations, the GAO found.

Among the case studies of premium-class travel highlighted in the report:

• Twenty-one employees from the U.S. trade representative's office flew premium-class to Hong Kong at a cost of $99,000. None of them was authorized to fly premium class. Tickets in coach would have been $31,000, a cost difference of $68,000.

• A State Department executive flew first-class round trip from Washington to Honolulu at a cost of $4,155. He cited a "blanket" authorization that was valid only for Europe. Coach fare would have been $858.

• A Defense official flew premium-fare 15 times to various destinations at a cost of $100,000, citing a medical condition for the extra cost. Contrary to Defense regulations, he provided no doctor's certification for his condition, which involved a "non-life changing surgery" that had reportedly occurred four years prior to the travel.

The report does not include the names of individual offenders. But, as a group, the report identified senior-level executives and presidential appointees as the worst offenders, noting that they account for 15 percent of premium-class travel, even though they make up only one-half of 1 percent of the government workforce.

In all, premium-class tickets account for less than 1 percent of all flights taken government-wide. But the high cost of the tickets meant that the extra-cost tickets represented 7 percent of the money spent on government airline travel.

The government's general rule is that taxpayers should pay no more than is necessary to transport workers on official duty. That means they are expected to fly coach, except for under "exceptional" circumstances or unless they're specifically authorized to upgrade by their departments.

But the GAO found that most of the extra-cost travel is not tracked and that the government has no centralized data. To complete the study, investigators had to extract the information from government bank credit-card databases.

The GAO's estimate of $146 million in travel abuse a year, while not a lot by the standards of Washington waste and fraud, can multiply over the years if it's not curbed, Coleman said. "In Mankato, that's real money," he said.

While the GAO report focused mainly on the executive branch of government, lawmakers have their own reporting requirements.

Coleman, like most members of Congress, said he often flies first class because, as a frequent flyer, he can get upgrades at no cost to taxpayers.

"We buy coach class," he said.

Kevin Diaz • 202-408-2753

Kevin Diaz • kdiaz@startribune.com