Savings Of $400,000 In State Travel Suggested Study Finds No Major Problems In Handling Of Budget That Exceeds $20 Million

Some policy changes and negotiating with major airlines could trim at least $400,000 from the state’s yearly travel budget, the new legislative Office of Performance Evaluations reported on Monday.

But the first thorough evaluation conducted by the office offered little evidence of major problems in the way the state handles government travel.

“State government is pretty well managed despite the fact that the public doesn’t seem to know it,” House Appropriations Chairman Kathleen Gurnsey of Boise said.

Nancy Van Maren, director of the office, said the $400,000 estimate was the minimum savings to the state if all the recommendations were implemented.

The annual amount could be greater, she said, if the state could centralize travel management.

Still, even with the likely maximum savings, the state’s annual travel budget would still exceed $20 million, based on figures compiled for the budget year that ended June 30, 1994. That was the most recent year for which full travel information was available.

Travel expenses account for only a fraction of a percentage point of all the money the state spends each year - including endowments, receipts and other non-tax revenues secured by the state’s universities.

And centralizing travel management, particularly through a single travel agency, would appear tenuous at best, based on past history. During the 1994 budget year, state agencies dealt with 84 individual travel agencies around the state and a quarter of them received at least $20,000 each in state business. An attempt to consolidate state business with one travel agency several years ago - this one based in Utah - was torpedoed by those Idaho travel agencies.

Specifically, the evaluation called for restrictions on meal reimbursement that would preclude state workers being paid for breakfast on the day their travel begins and for lunch on trips that do not last overnight.

Van Maren said the lunch reimbursement recommendation was based on the fact that state workers are not reimbursed for lunch when they show at their regular work stations.

The evaluation also called for adoption of the federal reimbursement rate for lodging that sets ceilings on the nightly payment depending on the city, and requiring more airline tickets to be purchased at least seven days ahead of departure.

The evaluation found that 38 percent of the tickets for in-state travel were purchased less than seven days ahead of time, precluding any discount fares, and if discount fares were sought on just a fifth of those, the savings would total nearly $23,000 a year.

The state spent $5.6 million on commercial airfares during the evaluation period.

The evaluation also left open the validity of the state’s Aeronautics Division and its four airplanes. The bipartisan legislative committee overseeing performance evaluations will decide this fall whether to launch a full scale evaluation of that often-criticized operation.