State Administrators Sore About Travel Cuts Batt Says Plan Could Save Taxpayers $300,000 A Year

A proposal to change Idaho’s travel policy has touched some nerves among state administrators.

Gov. Phil Batt’s budget director, Dean Van Engelen, said he drafted a plan based largely on a recent legislative performance audit that figured policy changes could save the state about $300,000 a year from its $21 million travel budget.

It would require administrators to approve employees’ trips at least two weeks beforehand and insist on the most direct routes.

The blueprint would allow the reimbursement of one telephone call home per day, deduct complimentary meals from the daily allowance and ban compensatory time for traveling outside regular working hours.

“The problem as I see it is the state of Idaho as travelers always has had carte blanche,” Van Engelen said Wednesday. “They go stay at fourstar hotels and resorts and send the state the bill.

“Some agencies travel first class. Most agencies travel like you and I would.”

“It assumes state employees get rich at the expense of state government during their trips,” Idaho Public Employees Association President Jerry Rasavage said. “It could cause severe morale problems.”

Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Director Linda Caballero said the draft plan’s intent penalizes state employees rather than looking toward managers to evaluate travel decisions.

“It also creates a great deal of bureaucratic overhead with no documentable savings,” she wrote in a memo to a subcommittee of the state’s Board of Examiners.

Idaho State University President Richard Bowen said the proposal mixes federal travel reimbursement and Idaho’s current guidelines to provide the least coverage for state employees.

“If the federal reimbursement is used, it seems that in the interest of consistency and fairness, federal rates should also be used for per diem and private vehicle use,” he wrote in a memo to that subcommittee.

Bowen said the proposal violates the federal Fair Labor Standards Act because classified employees would lose compensatory time for traveling outside regular hours.

Van Engelen said he is asking the attorney general’s office whether the proposal is consistent with federal labor law.