From Hawaii to Taiwan, state picks up tab when legislators hit the road

When the Indiana General Assembly is not in session, state legislators are often traveling to conferences on the taxpayer’s dime—but not all are run-of-the-mill policy talks.

From organizations with religious undertones to opportunities for corporate influence, legislators are rubbing shoulders with a range of controversial actors. And the state of Indiana pays for it all.

From 2019 to 2022, legislators were reimbursed for $335,226 for costs associated with legislative travel, including hotels, flights and conference registration fees. Only three trips took place in 2020—before the pandemic—meaning the majority of the costs came from just three years.

The 100-member Indiana House of Representatives accumulated a total cost of $218,359, or $1,775 per trip, while the 50-member Senate saw $116,867, or $1,113 per trip, in expenses.

During the four-year period, legislators attended conferences across the country and even the world. The few international trips included Germany, Canada and Taiwan, while major cross-country trips spanned Hawaii, Texas and Florida.

Although some legislators made trips on their own, the most popular conferences were the American Legislative Exchange Council, National Conference of State Legislatures and Council of State Governments.

An opportunity to learn

Sen. Jeff Raatz, R-Richmond, who chairs the Senate Education and Career Development Committee and is a member of the Appropriations Committee, racked up $9,267 in travel costs over the course of 11 trips, making him the top spender and the most frequent traveler in the Senate.

Raatz’s travels are almost exclusively related to education —like Excel in Ed or the Education Commission of the States, where Raatz is listed as a commissioner for Indiana.

Education is constantly changing, Raatz said, which requires him to keep up with what’s new by attending conferences, particularly when out of session.

“The longer I’m in, the more precise I am to pay attention to education,” he said.

Raatz gave House Enrolled Act 1558—which centers on the science of reading—as an example of something talked about at a conference that later made its way into Indiana legislation.

The top spender in the House, Rep. Earl Harris Jr., D-East Chicago, declined an interview but echoed these sentiments in a statement.

“Rep. Harris has a history of legislative success and bipartisanship, which has been aided by his attendance at legislative conferences,” the statement read. “Politics is a collaborative effort, and several ideas–including Rep. Harris’ efforts to create a hunger-free campus grant program–were sparked at a conference.”

For Raatz, Harris and other legislators, leadership positions can increase the amount of travel expected of them. As vice-chair of the Board of Latino Legislative Leaders and Region VIII chair for the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, Harris is responsible for attending regular conferences, a spokesperson for Harris said.

All travel must be approved by leadership—Speaker Todd Huston in the House or Pro Tem Rodric Bray in the Senate—but rules governing travel are flexible.

In the Senate, legislators are restricted to one trip per year per, although exceptions can be made, like when a legislator holds a leadership position. Between 2019 and 2022, the Senate had 24 instances of a legislator traveling more than once per year.

The state will reimburse travel to the 48 contiguous states, with all other trips reimbursed at the average rate of continuous travel, as calculated by the Legislative Services Agency.

The House also restricts legislators to one trip per year, but will pay for an additional registration fee per representative.

Controversial conference

Despite leaning heavily on more typical conferences, a handful of legislators—including Raatz—attended conferences with controversial speakers.

One such conference is called the Wallbuilders ProFamily Legislative Conference, which aims to link like-minded state legislators and share resources. The organization claims to analyze hundreds of bills from state legislatures to identify those promoting “pro-family issues” with the ultimate goal of providing legislators in other states the material to implement the same policies without wasting time “replicating work already done.”

The group lists services such as assistance drafting legislation, providing expert testimony and sample legislation.

But what does Wallbuilders stand for? For starters, it describes itself as an “organization dedicated to presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious and constitutional foundation on which America was built—a foundation which, in recent years, has been seriously attacked and undermined.”

The “Issues” section on its website spans topics like strengthening gun rights to issues of morality and parental choice. A particularly lengthy section on education lists concepts like “discipline,” “homosexual indoctrination,” “origins of life,” “patriotism” and “Bible electives” as priorities.

Some of these ideas reflect the ideology of the organization’s founder and president, David Barton. Though less notorious now, Barton made headlines in 2012 for his book “The Jefferson Lies,” which argued Thomas Jefferson was a Christian, a belief contrary to general consensus among historians that Jefferson was a deist who rejected many critical Christian doctrines.

Although the book made the New York Times Bestsellers List, it was widely denounced, even among Christian conservative academics, who claimed the book was filled with errors. Eventually, the book was pulled by the publisher.

Barton has also been criticized for espousing homophobic beliefs such as his 2012 claim at a Wallbuilders event that AIDS was a form of punishment for LGBTQ+ people.

Past speakers have also been controversial. In 2022, this included Michael P. Farris, who previously served as CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom—a legal advocacy group involved in litigation to oppose same-sex marriage and the decriminalization of same-sex activity. Most recently, ADF has supported the campaign for passing bills in state legislatures to restrict transgender athletes in sports.

When asked about his attendance at Wallbuilders in 2021, Raatz said it was only the second time he had gone. He described it as “pro-family” and “biblically based,” and that it centers on the history of the United States.

Other Wallbuilders attendees since 2019 include Reps. J.D. Prescott, R-Union City, Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland and Charles “Woody” Burton, although Burton is no longer in office. In total, the state spent $3,937 on Wallbuilders-related travel in the four years of records.

In fact, a testimonials page on the Wallbuilders site lists praise from an unnamed Indiana Representative, who is quoted as saying there is “no gathering that more influences how I carry out my responsibilities as a legislator.”

ALEC conference criticized for lack of transparency

ALEC, which raked in nearly $80,000 in Indiana taxpayer dollars over the three years of active traveling, has a secretive reputation and is often criticized for giving a platform for corporations and lobbyists to influence legislators.

Common Cause, a national organization that advocates for transparent government, lists ALEC as a corporate lobbying organization that works with legislators to draft and vote on “model bills.”  Much of this legislation is then taken to state legislatures with the involvement of ALEC concealed, Common Cause claims.

Indiana’s ALEC connection is deeper than just legislative travel.

In 2011, ALEC created an Indiana Education Reform Package based on a series of bills passed in the Indiana General Assembly that same year. ALEC states that Indiana’s reforms are “similar to existing ALEC model legislation,” which includes policies related to charter schools and choice scholarships.

In 2017, Indiana’s own Sen. Jim Buck, R-Kokomo was ALEC’s national chair. Today, he is a state chair and serves on the national board of directors.

Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, said legislative travel can be a beneficial use of taxpayer money—if it’s purely educational.

“I think it gets sticky when you have lobbyists attending these same meetings and taking these opportunities out of state, away from the eyes of a lot of people who are familiar with legislators to take these opportunities to take them out to dinner, cruises, various entertainment opportunities that might be had out of state during conferences,” she said.

It doesn’t take much for a legislator to feel indebted, Vaughn said, and it is a human response to want to help friends out. In Indiana, this attitude is part of a culture that other states refuse to tolerate, she said.

For example, Wisconsin does not even allow lobbyists to buy legislators a cup of coffee. In Indiana, lobbyists can give anything under $50 and can give gifts of higher values if they obtain the consent of the legislator prior.

Vaughn argues gifts of any kind, even small ones, can give special interests an advantage over constituents who cannot wine-and-dine legislators to get their voices heard.

But even lobby laws cannot cover the potential influences of certain types of legislative travel. Six organizations are specifically listed as exempt from lobby laws in Indiana—and ALEC is one of them.  So is the National Conference of State Legislatures and Council of State Governments.

But ALEC often pays for legislators’ accommodations when they attend conferences—usually with scholarship funds that receive donations from corporate members.

“So it’s particularly troubling when this travel involves ALEC, because they do have this special cloak of secrecy here in Indiana,” she said.

The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, not-for-profit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.