Nuclear industry bankrolling legislators' travel bills

WASHINGTON -- The offices of three members of Congress who have led the fight to dump the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada have rung up $204,800 in travel bills since 1996 that were paid for by the nuclear power industry.

The 77 trips taken by Sens. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, or their staffers varied from low-budget overnights in Williamsburg, Va., to a more lavish $17,000 week-long stay in France, a Sun analysis has found.

The elected officials or their aides also took free trips to Spain, England, Japan, Sweden, The Netherlands and Belgium. Numerous trips were made in the United States to such places as New Orleans, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, Santa Fe, N.M., and New York City.

The Sun examined the travel records of Murkowski, Craig and Barton because they are three key players in the plan to bury 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste inside Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Members of Congress and their staffers accept special-interest paid trips to make speeches, attend conferences and take site tours. By law they must file reports on the trips within 30 days. Reports on official Congressional trips, paid for by taxpayers, are filed separately.

The trips are legal and common, but critics question whether special interests use their travel budgets to buy influence in Congress. The trips win them the important commodities of time and access to members of Congress and their key aides.

"It's priceless to have a captive audience of that member," said Sheila Krumholz, of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. "Time is absolutely money. The ultimate question is how useful were these trips?"

Krumholz said trips are legitimate when the travel is strictly educational.

"Often it turns out to be a laundry list of perks for staffers and not ultimately for information and illumination," Krumholz said.

"These are elected officials," said Peter Eisner, managing director of another Washington watchdog group, the Center for Public Integrity. "They are elected to make decisions, not go on vacations."

Eisner said Congress -- taxpayers -- should pay the bill if the trip was important enough to make.

"You know when public officials are flaunting the law and the public knows it, too," Eisner said.

Nevada's four-member delegation for years has battled in Congress the plan to bury nuclear waste in Nevada.

"There is no question that the nuclear power industry has deep pockets, and they are able to wine and dine members of Congress," Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said.

"It's apparent from the number of trips that were taken by members of Congress as guests of the nuclear industry that the nuclear industry is trying to buy the House of Representatives," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said.

The Senate passed the most recent Yucca-related bill last month and the House passed it last week, although President Clinton has threatened a veto.

Murkowski and Craig are the plan's most vocal supporters in the Senate. Murkowski represents a state with no nuclear power plants but has said his job as Senate Energy Committee chairman demands he rescue plants around the nation that are "choking" on their own waste. The best solution is to bury it in one place, he has said.

Craig, another Energy committee member, has long supported the Yucca plan.

Barton is chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee on energy, which has crafted a bill that would ship nuclear waste to Nevada by 2003 for temporary storage until the permanent burial ground was completed.

Murkowski, his wife and staff accepted $126,278 in free trips from the nuclear industry since 1996. Of the 45 trips taken by the office, seven were made by the senator at cost of $45,152. His wife accompanied him on six trips.

Craig, his wife and staff have taken 15 trips since 1996 for $32,145, of which the senator went on four at a cost of $10,366. He took his wife on one trip.

Barton, his wife and staff have taken $46,377 in 17 trips since 1996. The congressman's portion of the tab included six of the trips for $24,438. His wife accompanied him on two trips.

Those dollar figures fit into a larger picture: Special-interest groups paid about $6.3 million on travel for Congress members and their staffs in one year, 1997, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That was the last year trip totals were calculated for all of Congress.

That year, Murkowski was ranked No. 2 on the list of 100 senators, with his staff racking up nearly $82,000 in special-interest-paid travel, about 25 percent of that paid by the nuclear industry. Craig was No. 4, with nearly $43,000 in travel, about 30 percent nuclear-industry paid.

In 1997 the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading lobbyist for the industry and a staunch backer of the Yucca plan, paid for 98 trips, 75 to Las Vegas and Yucca Mountain.

Electric companies with nuclear power plants like Florida Power & Light, Edison Electric, Northern States Power and Texas Utilities, paid for some trips; several companies that have a significant interest in the Yucca project paid for others.

For example, engineering firm Morrison Knudsen is heavily involved in Department of Energy studies and projects now on-going at Yucca.

Morrison Knudsen picked up the tab when Craig, along with wife, Suzanne, took a $6,724 trip to Carlsbad, N.M., home of another waste site called WIPP, and to British Columbia. The company paid for a similar Murkowski trip.

Craig spokesman Will Hart said, "It's standard operating procedure to take advantage of the knowledge these groups have. Sen. Craig feels that it's very important that staffers get in, do their work and get out. I mean, they get off the plane, get checked in and the next thing they know they are in a briefing for three hours -- it's about work," Hart said.

Craig aide Nils Johnson traveled more than anyone in the senator's office, visiting nuclear power facilities in trips to France, Japan and Sweden. Southern Nuclear Operating Co., which operates three plants in America, paid $6,601 for the trip to Japan.

NEI paid $5,211 for Johnson's two European trips. Johnson also made two NEI-paid trips to Las Vegas to visit Yucca Mountain.

Among the 17 trips Barton and his staffers made was a $17,000, six-night trip the congressman and his wife, Janet, took to Marseille and Paris on a "fact-finding trip to tour European nuclear technology sites," according to the trip report. Barton said he didn't remember who paid for his trips.

"Who pays for the trip is not what is important, what is important is going out to look at the sites, to look at Yucca Mountain, look at the roads, look at the railroads and the projected routes for transportation," Barton said. "There is no substitute for actually visiting the site, seeing the repository because it is going to be there for a long time."

Southern Nuclear Operating Co. has hosted Barton and several staffers, as well as Murkowski and staffers, within the last year for power plant visits. Rick Kimble said company officials briefed them on the history of the nuclear waste issue before the tour.

"Our business is very technical," Kimble said. "It's a business that is one that is not easily explained without someone making an on-site visit."

Murkowski and his staffers have taken the most industry-paid trips in recent years, 55.

NEI in May 1999 spent $13,581 on airfare for Murkowski and his wife, Nancy, to visit picturesque Avignon, France, to meet with representatives of Cogema-Eurodif, a uranium enrichment plant, and tour MELOX, a nuclear fuel fabrication plant. NEI-paid hotel bills for the two totaled $685 for three nights and meals totaled $480s.

Murkowski always prefers to travel with his wife, spokeswoman Tina Kreisher said.

Kreisher said trips may include "nice dinners or hotels with nice pools," but Murkowski and staffers focus on work, not their accommodations.

"There's an occasional game of golf, but that doesn't make us beholden to them," Kreisher said. "Does that mean that when they snap their fingers, we jump? I don't think so. It's a little bit of a stretch."

Kreisher said it was important to note the issue of nuclear waste was not always the focus of the trips paid for by utility companies.

A four-paragraph statement from the Senate Energy Committee, in response to Sun questions, stressed the importance of staffers getting "first-hand" experience.

"Senators on the committee expect staffers to be experts and to understand the consensus as well as the controversy," the statement said.

NEI officials stress they are not buying influence.

NEI sponsors trips in the U.S. to industry conferences and to tour power plants. It sponsors trips to Europe for visits to power plants and plants that reprocess nuclear fuel for commercial reactors, which is not done in America.

"I'd be lying if I said there was not a little down time factored in," Kerekes said. "You are asking some important people to take time out of their schedules, so you have to allow for some decompression time. These are some pretty serious undertakings."

"I would stress that these are approved by the (House and Senate) ethics committee, and we believe very seriously in adhering to both the letter and the spirit of those laws that are in place," Kerekes said.

Eisner, of the Center for Public Integrity, said that's not enough.

"Public officials have to hold themselves to a higher standard than what is legally or not legally required," Eisner said.

Nuclear power plant foes say the industry uses free trips in a three-pronged strategy that includes campaign money contributions and fat lobbying budgets.

Numerous electric companies with nuclear power plants in recent years made contributions to individual candidates as well as to the national Republican and Democratic party committees, according to Washington-based FECInfo, which tracks campaign money.

NEI has handed Murkowski $7,499; Craig $3,000; and Barton $$3,469 since 1996.

NEI gave $43,649 in 1999 and $77,319 in the 1998 election cycle to other individual candidates. The group gave $26,675 to the Republican committees and $20,000 to the Democratic committees last year.

In addition, NEI spent $1.6 million on lobbying both Republicans and Democrats in 1999, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

"Whether it's trips or gifts or the more pervasive corrupting impact of huge campaign donations, we see all of these kinds of activities corrupting the Democratic process," said Anna Aurilio, of U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer and environmental group.

When the nuclear industry offers free trips to Congress members, it "cements" the relationship between the two, said Wenonah Hauter, who follows the nuclear waste issue for Washington-based Public Citizen, a citizen advocacy group.

"It's all part of the buying and selling of public policy," Hauter said. "In Washington, that's the way the game is played. It's all part of government."

Benjamin Grove covers Washington, D.C., for the Sun. He can be reached at (202) 628-3100 ext. 269, or by e-mail at [email protected].

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