State Pays Expenses as Reps. Play Hooky

State Rep. Gus Serra, D-Boston, spent the week of May 1985 in Rome.

But he collected the $5 per day he gets for traveling to the State House in Boston, the Boston Sunday Herald reported.

The week was part of 62 days he collected the daily $5 despite the fact he missed all roll call votes, according to the newspaper.

Said Serra, whose roll-call attendance record was 38 percent from 1984 to 1986, he does not keep records of the per diems he collects.

The commuting money he received while in Rome, he said, was an an honest mistake.

"I'm there every day," Serra said, adding, "I'm doing what I have to do, even if I might sit in my office during roll calls. What's the total figure, $1,000 a year? It's not exorbitant. For $5 a day, you're gonna croak me?"

According to The Herald, Serra was among at least 40 former and current state representatives who billed the state for a total of at least 400 days of commuting pay for days when they missed all roll call votes.

"The amount of money involved is not the major problem here," said Elizabeth Fay, executive director of the public interest group Common Cause. "The important thing is whether or not our elected officials are setting the example they should be. Cheating the system is cheating the taxpayers. It's wrong and it's sad."

Depending on how far they live from Boston, lawmakers receive $5 to $45 for daily travel to the State House in addition to their base salary of $30,000 a year and a $2400 general expense account. Reimbursement for commuting is based on the honor system.

Most lawmakers said mistakes were the result of their own poor record keeping. The per diem pay is based on the distance from the lawmakers' homes to the Statehouse.

Thirty-seven representatives took money for traveling to the Statehouse on Sept. 27, 1985. That was the day Hurricane Gloria hit, closing the Legislature for the day.

Former Rep. Vincent Piro took his $5 per diem every day of his three-week federal extortion trial in 1984.

"I parked at the Statehouse every day and walked down to my lawyer's office," he told the Herald. "I went up to my office either in the morning or after the trial."

The Somerville Democrat said he was at the Statehouse 248 days in 1984--more than any of the other 159 state representatives that year-despite a 40.6 percent roll-call attendance record.