Minnesota congressman’s chief of staff tallies travel expenses among highest in Congress

The chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad has been reimbursed for more than $125,000 in travel expenses from a taxpayer-funded account since 2023, making him one of the biggest spenders on travel among top congressional staffers.

David FitzSimmons, a former GOP state legislator, has served as a chief of staff for several U.S. House Republicans from Minnesota over the last decade, including Reps. Tom Emmer and Michelle Fischbach. He’s worked with Finstad, earning more than $200,000 a year, since 2022.

A Minnesota Star Tribune review of expenditure data from the U.S. House of Representatives shows FitzSimmons’ travel reimbursements since 2023 are higher than any of the state’s elected House members, though it is possible that some members’ travel expenses were paid for by a government-issued purchasing card.

The chief of staff is the highest-ranking employee in a congressional office, overseeing operations and helping shape the member’s political strategy and policy priorities. Finstad spokeswoman Jenny Luepke said FitzSimmons “regularly travels for official purposes.”

“He frequently travels between [his] residence in Minnesota to events in Minnesota, drives and staffs the Congressman, as well as manages Minnesota staff and offices, in addition to traveling to Washington D.C. for events, staffing the Congressman, and managing the D.C. office and staff,” Luepke said in a written response to questions.

FitzSimmons’ expenses stand in stark contrast to other chiefs of staff among the Minnesota delegation. Some of those staffers have claimed almost no travel expenses, though a handful have claimed more than $10,000 a year in recent years.

While working for Finstad, FitzSimmons has claimed more than $40,000 a year in 2023 and 2024 and has already been reimbursed more than $33,000 in travel expenses in the first half of 2025, the data shows.

“Just like every Member of Congress, our office determines the best way to utilize those funds to serve the people of our district,” Luepke said.

The expense data provides a snapshot of how each office uses taxpayer resources. And while it does not include many details — it doesn’t indicate, for instance, why the travel happened or where it happened — government ethics experts and a former chief of staff told the Star Tribune that FitzSimmons’ spending is high enough to raise alarms.

“I don’t know enough to say if it’s an abuse of taxpayer dollars, but it’s not a good look,” said Tessa Gould, a former chief of staff for several congresspeople and former U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.). Gould is now a partner at Forbes Tate Partners, a Washington, D.C., consulting group.

Congressional research shows that the national average for travel expenses is 4% of an office’s total spending. The Star Tribune’s review of spending data shows that Finstad’s office spent more than 8% of its budget on travel in 2023 and 2024. That equates to between about $160,000 and $170,000 a year.

Former Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn and Gov. Tim Walz, who represented the district before Finstad, both spent as much as $100,000 annually on travel between 2016 and 2022 and often much less.

FitzSimmons’ 2024 travel expenses were the eighth-highest of any chief of staff across the country for any year in the last decade. His claims include $20,145 in flights, $22,656 in lodging, $3,690 in mileage, $3,138 in parking and $1,643 in rideshare costs.

Since 2016, FitzSimmons has been reimbursed $158,723 in travel expenses, the fourth-most among the more than 1,000 chiefs of staff that have served a House member in that time.

“That absolutely raises my eyebrows,” said Cynthia Brown, senior ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The key in determining whether the spending crosses a line is establishing its purpose, Brown said. The data does not contain that information. House ethics rules say the account may only be used for official expenses and that members may be “personally liable for misspent funds,” or spending that exceeds the annual limit.

While members can be reimbursed for living expenses including lodging, food and travel while in Washington under a 2022 rule change, their staffers can only receive payments for expenses incurred on official business — not for personal commutes or other living expenses.

Gould, the consultant, said she lived in South Dakota while serving as a congressman’s chief of staff in the 2000s and would fly on the taxpayers’ dime but stay at a friend’s home in D.C. to hold costs down.

“House administration gives a great deal of latitude to individual offices to make decisions to best serve their constituencies,” she said. “But it’s not an open book to run up expenses in a way that best serves you individually.”

Most chiefs of staff in Minnesota’s delegation have relatively few travel bills. Rep. Tom Emmer’s chief, Sally Fox, expensed less than $3,500 in 2024, and Rep. Ilhan Omar’s top staffer, Connor McNutt, filed just two claims for less than $60.

Rep. Pete Stauber’s chief Desiree Koetzle filed about $15,000 in travel claims in 2024 and more than $58,000 dating back to 2019, mostly in flight expenses. In 2023, she told a podcast that she would regularly fly between her Washington, D.C.-area home and Stauber’s northeastern Minnesota district, where she owns a cabin on Lake Vermilion.

“It’s just really nice to be able to come back and meet up with folks here and get business done here along with my boss,” she told the podcast.

Koetzle’s travel could be problematic if she ever contrived business reasons for what were otherwise personal trips, said Delaney Marsco, director of ethics at Campaign Legal Center.

“That’s not permitted,” Marsco said.

In June 2024, she moved back to the Iron Range, a spokesman for Stauber’s office said. Since then, the data shows she’s traveled more often – appearing to take three round-trips a month in November 2024, January 2025 and February 2025 at a total cost of nearly $8,000.

“With the very heavy voting schedule this session, she has been in Washington during most session weeks, working for the people of Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District, sacrificing time away from her family to serve,” Stauber spokesman Louis Crombie wrote in an email.

Crombie said Koetzle has “never” traveled for personal reasons, argued that the vast Eighth District requires more travel than smaller urban districts, and criticized the Star Tribune for publishing “nothing but a muckraking exercise to smear hardworking staff who are the utmost professionals.”

Straka still lives in Minnesota, said McCollum spokesman Luke Bishop, and does not have a residence in Washington.