An angry voter who thinks top elected officials develop ethical blind spots about their own powers filed an Ethics Commission complaint Tuesday over Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp’s travel expenses.
“In the grand scheme of things, there are probably a lot worse things going on,” said David Plyer of Clearwater. “But it’s seeing these guys’ disregard for the people who put them in power that bothers me so much.”
Kottkamp and Gov. Charlie Crist were in the Tampa Bay area for the governor’s annual baseball dinner. The governor’s office did not have an immediate comment on Plyer’s complaint.
Plyer, who earlier filed ethics complaints against House Speaker Ray Sansom, R-Destin, and former Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson, said he didn’t think Kottkamp should commute from his home in Fort Myers to Tallahassee. Gov. Charlie Crist also schedules work in the Tampa Bay area on Fridays and Mondays, weekending at his home in St. Petersburg, and past governors and lieutenant governors have used state planes to take them home and pick them up.
Plyer’s complaint to the Commission on Ethics cited a law on “misuse of public position” that states no officers or employees can use their government jobs “to secure a special privilege, benefit or exemption.”
Kottkamp vigorously protested figures cited in a South Florida Sun-Sentinel report that said his 365 flights during his first two years in office had cost taxpayers $425,000. The lieutenant governor reimbursed the Department of Management Services $6,600 for travel by his wife and son on state planes but said his own trips cost only $38,600 in 2007 and $48,000 last year.
Those costs were for Kottkamp’s personal presence aboard the flights. The Broward County newspaper, however, cited DMS figures which included costs of flying planes empty between Tallahassee and Fort Myers to pick him up, along with travel costs of security officers and aides who accompanied Kottkamp.
The St. Petersburg Times ran a tab on Kottkamp’s ground transportation, calculating that the Florida Highway Patrol spent about $64,000 in travel expenses for a captain assigned as his security officer and driver.
Source: tallahassee.com
