Rep. Harrison denies expenditure allegations

A local legislator says allegations that he double-dipped on travel expenses are inaccurate, and that details from audits he is having done will ultimately vindicate him of any suggestion that wrongdoing occurred.

State Rep. Joe Harrison, R-Napoleonville, was named along with another legislator, Frank Howard, R-Many, in an article published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and featured on WVUE-TV, as having extremely high mileage reimbursement numbers.

A review of campaign and legislative records revealed that Harrison charged his campaign more than $25,700 in gas purchases between 2010 and 2013, while receiving $24,900 in mileage reimbursements from the House. Some of those purchases, the report says, occurred on the same days that were reflected in mileage reimbursement request from the House.

There is no evidence, the report states, that Harrison paid any of the mileage money back to the Legislature.

Harrison maintains that there is no evidence that anything he did was untoward.

“My accountant told me that so far as the taxpayers are concerned I had done nothing wrong,” Harrison said Sunday.

He is in the process, he said, of having accountants review both his House mileage records and money charged against his campaign fund.

In some instances, he said, it is possible that mileage was paid on the same day as a gasoline purchase because he and an aide may have traveled separately.

Many of the expenses attributed to his aide, Harrison said, are paid out of the campaign finance account.

“I pay for her gas,” he said.

The campaign money, Harrison said, has been spent on a range of things that are within permissible limits and practices.

As an example he cited an annual community fair in Dulac, where he has told organizers that he will pay for the food tickets of any attendee that is a veteran of the armed forces.

“This is a front page story that will end up having regrets printed on page 45 in a 440-page newspaper,” Harrison said. “The thing that bothers me is that this story besmirches my name. My family is so upset.”

Harrison’s campaign accounts are not known to have been the subject of any investigation by the Louisiana Bard of Ethics, although that body does not comment on matters that are unsubstantiated or don’t make it to the board’s agenda.

Reimbursement for travel from the state is approved by the Speaker of the House, said Harrison, who acknowledges that he has racked up a lot of expenses.

Meetings related to the seafood business, which is a key industry in his district, Harrison said, including trips to Washington, D.C., have been valid paid expenses.

Harrison’s district covers portions of four parishes, including Terrebonne and Lafourche, and that means a lot of travel not only within the district, but out of it.

He cited recent scheduling that saw him traveling to Lafayette in the morning then to Baton Rouge. Multidestination trips in the course of a day are not unusual, he said.

“The campaign fund, which has money I use for fairs or charitable tings in my district, is from money I raised,” Harrison said. “It comes from campaign funds for fairs or charitable things in my district I raised that money it comes from the fundraising from me and my family. We have a golf tournament. I don’t get what those other people get from PAC funds. I work for that money. It is very well documented and very well detailed. This is my name that they are dragging through the mud.”

The Times-Picayune reported that Howard announced plans to return about $1,700 to his campaign fund that was double-billed, and that he acknowledged making a mistake.

Harrison said he is confident that in his own situation there is no need to do so, at least at this point.

He will continue, he said, managing expenses through state claims and payouts from the campaign fund as he has, unless he learns from an authority something is amiss. So far he has no plans to seek an opinion either from the Ethics Board or the Attorney General.

“I am not going to change the way I represent my district because of a reporter,” Harrison said.