Keep Roaming, Congressman Pombo

The Tracy Press

House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo is unorthodox in his oversight of the national parks and forests. Instead of flying over them or taking a motorcade to them from a plush hotel on their outskirts, a couple of summers ago Pombo packed up an RV, brought along his wife and three kids and visited 10 parks, just like any other American family might do during the summer. Pombo paid for their meals and incidentals and the entire family slept in the rented RV.

About 1,000 days later, Pombo is being criticized for his $4,935.82 government-paid excursion that spanned 10 days and 5,000 miles through five Western states. Why, and why now?

We applaud the media for publishing stories about Pombo's summer trip; it's their responsibility to lay out the facts and present the explanation that was given without hesitation by Pombo, a Tracy Republican who's been in Congress 14 years. However, the media, including us, didn't think it was a story back in the summer of 2003.

During this election year, someone was motivated to send a copy of Pombo's approved expenditure account for the excursion to the media in his 11th District. It may have been the same motivation that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had two days after the story broke to smear Pombo again.

Of course, these Beltway brethren aren't keen to Pombo's unorthodox ways. Since he became chairman of the House Resources Committee, Pombo has broken a lot of sacred cows - one of them is getting himself, his committee and its staff out of Washington so that they can bring the government to the people and not vice versa. How many committee field hearings did Pombo's immediate predecessor hold? Twenty-three.

How many by Pombo? Sixty-nine and counting. They have been spread across America, from Kaktovik, Alaska, to Hobbs, N.M., with many in between but none back in Washington, D.C. Getting out of Washington is well worth the $129,895 annual committee travel expense.

Site visits by members of the Resources Committee are now numerous, too. Pombo took his government-approved park tour in July and August 2003 to check on park management, maintenance and necessary improvements with prearranged meetings. At one national park, he rolled up in the RV to discover to his dismay that the visitor's center was locked up like a ghost town.

We'd rather have an elected representative with his feet on the ground like common folk than one who expects to be part of a ceremonial entourage. Pombo could have spent close to $25,000 touring the 10 national parks and forests by plane and with room service, but when he heard the estimated cost of such a trip he chose a less expensive and probably more efficient way to check on America's prized possessions.

By the way, while Pombo was on the road with his wife, teenage son and two younger daughters, guess what one of his rival congressmen, Democrat George Miller of Pleasant Hill, was doing? Miller was packing his bags for his and his daughter's $8,733, 10-day, foundation-paid trip to Moscow (Russia, not Idaho) for an Aspen Institute conference on foreign relations. That was after Miller got back from an $8,810, eight-day trip to Rome (Italy, not Ohio) with his wife to yet another Aspen Institute conference, this one on the world's environment.

What, no criticism of honorable Congressman Miller's special-interest travel?