Top GOP aide charged $44,000 to taxpayers for his commute in 'highly unusual' arrangement

Politico reports the top aide to Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) charged $44,000 to taxpayers over the past two years for commuting expenses between Washington and his home in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Most top aides reside either in Washington or the lawmaker’s home state, but Marshall bought a home roughly 200 miles from Washington early last year in what is not Marshall’s home state. Experts say this is “highly unusual and at odds with the intent behind [Senate] rules,” said Politico.

“Between April of that year and the following September, [Brent Robertson] took 11 trips labeled ‘Lynchburg VA to Washington DC and Return’ and got $16,000 back in expenses from the government,” Politico reports, quoting Senate expense records. Marshall’s expenses included “incidentals,” “transportation” and an untaxed “per diem.”

Between October of last year and this past March, Politico reports Robertson also took 15 trips under the same label and received an additional $28,000 and a per diem payment of $10,000 for one trip to D.C. between Jan. 14 and Jan. 23, which coincided with Trump’s inauguration.

Critics questioned the fiscal responsibility of the setup.

“What if everybody decided to do that, let their staff live far away from their location, and then just charge it off to the government?” said Stanley Brand, an attorney who served as House general counsel under Speaker Tip O’Neill.

Brand called the arrangement “a big, wide loophole” and said he had “never” heard of a similar setup.

Marshall’s spokesman Payton Fuller said the Republican Senator is permitted under Senate rules to designate a remote duty station for his employees and charge travel expenses to taxpayers. Fuller added that D.C. violence prompted the aid to flee 200 miles away.

“After a gang shooting struck his wife’s vehicle outside their D.C. condo, Brent and his family made the decision last year to move to Virginia,” Fuller said in a statement.

Robertson, reports Politico, is on track to earn more than $220,000 in salary this year.

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, interim vice president of policy and government affairs at the nonprofit watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO) told Politico that the scheme “appears as though it’s purely personal, which is not what those funds are supposed to be used for.”

Senate expense rules prohibit spending taxpayer funds for personal use, and Hedtler-Gaudette said the expenses “violate the spirit” of those guidelines.

“It would be one thing if he was traveling to Kansas because that’s the state that his boss is the senator from,” said Hedtler-Gaudette.

See the Politico report at this link.