CA-11: Pinballing Pombo

Posted by jesselee
Monday, February 13, 2006 at 4:04 PM

We've only kept a wavering eye on the recent Pombo reveleations here at the blog, but the DCCC has been pounding him pretty good as a whole and it looks like his long, sordid history of treating the US Treasury as a personal slush fund might finally be catching up with him, so let's get caught up ourselves.

First there was this...

Pombo charges taxpayers for vacation [Tracy Press]

In summer 2003, just after he was named chairman of the House Resources Committee, Rep. Richard Pombo loaded the family in an RV for “two weeks on vacation” traveling around the West.

Documents obtained by the Tracy Press show taxpayers covered most of his expenses.

“This August, my family and I rented an RV and set out to explore the West,” Pombo, R-Tracy, wrote in a 2003 article posted on the Resources Committee’s Web site.

“We spent two weeks on vacation, stopping along the way to enjoy the splendor of many of our national parks.”

Pombo was reimbursed $4,935.87 to rent the RV and spent $1,500.51 on a government credit card for “travel subsistence” during a two-week span from July 27 to Aug. 11, 2003, according to a Resources Committee spending ledger obtained by the Press.

After that, we pushed it around and other headlines started to trickle out...

Pombo family park tour cost taxpayers [San Francisco Chronicle]

Pombo defends vacation as business trip [Tracy Press]

We turned around this little web ad going through his entire history within about a day, with little more than some free software I like to play with and a sophisticated little diddy written by our junior web developer Joseph Jakuta...

And.... bada-bing:

Plenty of road trips for Pombo and staff [Tri-Valley Herald]

California Republican Richard Pombo hits the road plenty as chairman of the House Resources Committee. Now, the road is hitting back.

Since taking over the wide-ranging panel, a Sacramento Bee review shows, Pombo has kicked up its travel spending beyond almost every other congressional committee. He has authorized several hundred thousand dollars worth of staff trips funded by special interests. And now, an extended family outing for which taxpayers picked up the cost for an RV is highlighting benefits and costs of all this travel.

"If elected," Pombo's Republican primary challenger and former GOP congressman, Pete McCloskey, declared Friday, "I can promise the taxpayers I will pay for any trips I take to the national parks."

In hopes of shaking the seven-term incumbent, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Friday posted on its Internet site a two-minute television ad attacking Pombo. While thead specifically targets Pombo's newly controversial August 2003 trip — a trip that some park officials tell The Bee they don't recall — it also paints with a broader brush.

Or see that same story reprinted in the Sacramento Bee -- Bada-bing again.

And furthermore, bada-boom:

Pombo critics take aim [Tracy Press]

Rep. Richard Pombo’s Democratic and Republican opponents in this year’s election have latched onto a report that he used nearly $5,000 in taxpayer money to rent an RV for him and his family to tour several national parks.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Friday released a two-minute Web video that criticized the Tracy Republican for the trip.

ThinkProgress picks up from there -- what comes after bada-boom? -- with an indication that Pombo's best defense isn't so good...

Pombo Doesn’t Know What He Did Last Summer [ThinkProgress]

In recent days, Pombo has attempted to defend his 10-day, 5000-mile family vacation by saying that “there was no personal travel on this trip.” He stressed that at all his stops — from Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks to Mount Rushmore — he met with park officials on congressional business.

But many of the park officials Pombo claimed to have met, dispute the lawmaker’s claims:

The chief park naturalist at Sequoia and Kings Canyon, William Tweed, searched his records Friday and couldn’t find a sign of officials meeting with Pombo.

“I’m coming up with a blank,” Tweed said in an interview. “I do not personally remember him being here, (and that) is generally something we do recall. We pay attention, because congressmen are significant people for us.”

Joshua Tree National Park spokesman Joe Zarki, whose park was also on Pombo’s visitation list, likewise said Friday that “no one here at this point can say we met with Mr. Pombo.”

It’s probably a good thing: Pombo has proposed selling off 15 national parks if the Senate refused to allow drilling in the Alaska wildlife refuge.

Sounds like another round of stories to me...

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