Space alters travel plans, website

Criticized for taking part in a taxpayer-funded junket to his ancestral homeland of Greece, and unwilling to forgo campaign contributions from some of Washington, DC’s largest lobby firms, U.S. Representative Zack Space, D-OH, deleted from his website a copy of the pledge he signed last year vowing not to accept travel, meals and other gifts.

Space made lobby and Congressional reform a centerpiece of his 2006 campaign, when he captured the seat once held by scandal-plagued U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, now serving a 30 month prison sentence on a number of corruption charges. During that campaign, Space created and signed the “Zack Space Ethics Pledge,” promising to voters he would take “no gifts from lobbyists, no trips from lobbyists, and no meals from lobbyists.”

Honoring that pledge has been difficult for the Ohio freshman. He accepted, then returned, contributions from individual lobbyists on a number of occasions.

But after majorityap.com reported Space has decided to accept campaign contributions from lobby firms – a violation of his pledge – he removed it from his website. Space has argued that such contributions are permissible, since those firms also practice law. The firms in question, who gave $8,850 to Space’s re-election committee, have so far reported spending nearly $34 million lobbying Congress, according to the government watchdog Opensecrets.org.

The exact date Space removed his 2006 pledge is not known, although an Internet archive service reports the pledge was on-line through at least August, 2007.

JUNKET CRITICISM
When Democrats took control of Congress, they promised to curtail the kind of privately-sponsored travel that first landed Ney in hot water. The former Congressman took a trip to St. Andrews, Scotland, as the guest of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

USA Today reported recently that such trips continue in the Democrat-led Congress and, as a recent majorityap.com study found, House and Senate Democrats and staff have taken 459 privately-sponsored trips since January 1, 2007, at a total cost of more than $1.5 million.

Worse, according to the Washington Examiner, is that members of Congress are getting around the new rules by traveling at taxpayer expense.

“The congressional delegation trips, known as CODELs, are paid for by taxpayers,” the Examiner reported in April, noting that the military flew at least 13 congressional delegations during Congress’ Easter recess to such exotic locales as Grenada, Trinidad and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where an all-Democrat delegation stayed at the five-star Caneel Bay resort.

Space came under fire for just such a trip, after the Washington Post first reported that Space and four other members of Congress planned to travel to Cyprus and Greece during Congress’ current Thanksgiving break.

Space planned to travel “on a military jet - effectively your own private plane and staff - to Athens, staying at the lovely Hotel Grande Bretagne, which styles itself as ‘surely the most luxurious establishment in Greece,’ with a terrific rooftop restaurant and view of the city,” the Post’s Al Kamen wrote.

Once the Post story appeared, Space began taking heat back home, first for the luxurious accommodations, then because the trip hinted of a family vacation. The Ohio freshman’s grandparents emigrated from Greece and, despite it being his family’s homeland, Space himself had never been to Greece.

"If it smells like a junket and looks like a junket and feels like a junket, it probably is a junket,” Ohio Republican Chair Robert T. Bennett, told the Columbus Dispatch.

Space’s staff began giving varying accounts of the Congressman’s travel plans.

His spokesman told the Coshocton Tribune “he did not know if Space planned to bring a family member with him on the trip,” even though he told the Columbus Dispatch that same day Space and his wife would make the trip.

Such trips have been frequently criticized. Even Space’s own freshman colleague, U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton, D-OH, once said “the public is not stupid. When you take your family on a trip, they know it's not work. It's a vacation.”

Space relented under the pressure, and announced late last week he would personally pay the expenses of the trip for him and his wife.

But some questions still remain.

Tomorrow…a further look at Space’s trip, and his questionable use of taxpayer resources.