Top Missouri lawmaker repays travel reimbursements wrongly taken from state

2024-12-24 22:11:57 source: category:News

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s House speaker has repaid more than $3,300 in taxpayer dollars that he inappropriately received as reimbursements for travel and other expenses dating back to 2018.

Speaker Dean Plocher so far has repaid the state House $3,379, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Tuesday.

The Missouri Independent on Monday first reported years of expenses that Plocher received state reimbursement for, even though he paid for the expenses out of his campaign fund and not out of his own pocket.

Missouri law allows elected officials to use money from their political campaigns for some government-related expenses. But it’s unlawful to use taxpayer dollars to reimburse campaigns or for political expenses.

Other news The Supreme Court allows the White House to continue work to combat controversial social media posts The Supreme Court keeps a Missouri law on hold that bars police from enforcing federal gun laws Judge in Missouri transgender care lawsuit agrees to step aside but decries ‘gamesmanship’

In a Monday email to fellow Republican House members, Plocher wrote that his campaign treasurer, his wife, early last week told him he “had received reimbursement from the House for an extra hotel night during a conference I attended that I should not have been reimbursed.”

“When I learned of that, I immediately reimbursed the House,” Plocher wrote. “Because of this error, I reviewed all of my travel reimbursements and it revealed that I had additional administrative errors, to which I have corrected.”

Plocher did not immediately return Associated Press voice and text messages seeking comment Tuesday.

As early as 2018, Plocher used campaign money to pay for conferences, flights and hotels and then asked to be reimbursed by the House, according to the Post-Dispatch. The House denied his request to be reimbursed for valet parking during a July trip to Hawaii for a national conference.

Voters elected Plocher, a lawyer, to the House in 2015. He’s banned by term limits from running for re-election in 2024 and instead is vying to be the state’s next lieutenant governor.

In Missouri, gubernatorial candidates do not have running mates and campaign separately from would-be lieutenant governors.

More:News

Recommend

Judge weighs the merits of a lawsuit alleging ‘Real Housewives’ creators abused a cast member

NEW YORK (AP) — The lawyer for a former cast member of the “Real Housewives of New York” told a fede

McConnell’s Record on Coal Has Become a Hot Topic in His Senate Campaign

This story was also published in the Louisville Courier-Journal.WHITESBURG, Kentucky — Mitch McConne

Why Kim Cattrall Says Getting Botox and Fillers Isn't a Vanity Thing

And Just Like That... Kim Cattrall is sharing her outlook on aging.The 66-year-old recently offered