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Poe trying again to ban pay for travel to Springfield

Posted November 19, 2007 10:00 pm

Dana Heupel

State Rep. Raymond Poe has refiled legislation to ban state Cabinet officials, agency directors and others from collecting travel reimbursements for trips to Springfield.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich has faced criticism downstate and elsewhere because he doesn't live in the Executive Mansion and rarely visits the capital city. Most of his top staff also are based in the Chicago area.

"The governor's hijacked the state capital, and we want to make sure that they understand where the state capital's at," Poe, a Springfield Republican, said Tuesday.

"A lot of the Cabinet and a lot of the directors, we feel their point of origin of work should be in Springfield. We're paying for them to fly down and stay and all kinds of things," he said, "so it's just our quest yet to make sure that the people of Illinois still know that Springfield's the state capital."

The language in House Bill 4177 is identical to that in Poe's earlier legislation, House Bill 1959. The first bill passed the House in May, 115-0, but has stalled in the Senate.

The legislation states: "No State funds shall be used to pay or reimburse, and no State-compensated time shall be used by, a person elected to, appointed to, acting on behalf of the State in, or employed full time, part time, temporarily or on a contractual basis in a position in the executive branch of state government for travel to or from that person's State work location in the State capital."

"We just thought we'd take another run at it, and we might get it through the Senate this time," Poe said.

A spokeswoman for Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, could not be reached for comment about the potential fate in that chamber of either piece of legislation.

Dana Heupel can be reached at (217) 788-1518 or dana.heupel@sj-r.com.

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