Beshear: Aides will continue trips

By Ryan Alessi - ralessi@herald-leader.com

Gov. Steve Beshear will continue taking members of his cabinet on his 13-city town hall tour and will fly to other stops just as he and aides did last week at a cost of $7,088.

”I happen to think it's important to listen to what the people of this commonwealth think,“ he said in Lexington Monday at the Kentucky Association of Conservation Districts convention. ”So when I'm going around the state for the next two months, I'm going to take the cabinet secretaries with me regardless of whether the Herald-Leader likes it or not.“

The Herald-Leader reported last week that the administration chartered a flight for $4,474 and used the two state planes that cost $2,614 to fly Beshear and 15 aides to Virgie in Pike County for the first town hall meeting in the governor's two-month tour.

Earlier in his remarks to the conservation group, Beshear said: ”In these tough times, all of government is being called on to do more with less. I've worked hard in my first half of a year to find efficiencies where feasible.“

But later, Beshear told reporters he would rather incur the travel costs than use other methods, such as video conferencing, to connect cabinet secretaries with citizens.

”We're going to continue to take them in the most cost-efficient way and if it works in their time schedules,“ he said. ”But I think it's very important that people see these folks face to face and interact with them.“

Beshear said he thinks it's more efficient to take the government to the people than the other way around.

”I guarantee you this: the cost is a lot less to take them with me than it costs to take 400 Pike countians down to Frankfort and back,“ he said in his remarks.

With gasoline prices at $4 a gallon, Beshear is probably right that it would cost slightly more than $7,000 to charter eight 56-seat buses from Pike County to Frankfort for a daylong trip, said Eula Conley, manager of Enchanted World Travel. Charter buses are running about $1,000 for the day, she said.

Beshear and officials drove to Monday's town hall event in Somerset, which is the second in the series of forums scheduled to end in Paducah on Aug. 20.

Beshear also said his administration still will consider using charter airplanes, such as the Beechcraft King Air that the state rented from Air Lexington last week.

”We haven't ruled in or out any particular mode of transportation,“ he said.