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Bilirakis: You judge free trips to Vegas

Rep. Mike Bilirakis says voters can make up their own minds about the trips, which break no rules and are paid for by private groups.

By ANITA KUMAR
Published May 6, 2005

WASHINGTON - If a special interest group wants Rep. Mike Bilirakis to attend an event, the Tarpon Springs Republican says there's one way to get his attention:

Hold it in Las Vegas.

Bilirakis has taken eight trips there since 1997, all paid for by private organizations looking to influence him on issues pending before Congress. The most recent trip was in April.

During the eight years since the House modified the way it keeps travel records, Bilirakis accepted 13 trips for himself and family members at a cost of almost $40,000, including one to the Yucca Mountain federal nuclear waste repository in Nevada - 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"There's no magic to it. I enjoy being at a particular location," Bilirakis said. "I like organized casino gambling. I like going through the looking glass into fantasy world."

Bilirakis, who has been put up at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino and Paris Las Vegas, said he likes blackjack and dice games.

The trips are legal, but Bilirakis said he understands why his constituents might criticize him for going. He said he might be critical himself if he were not a public official.

"It's an argument people could certainly make," he said. "As long as there is complete disclosure, let them judge. It's in the eye of the beholder."

Lawmakers are invited on trips to attend conferences, give speeches or accept awards; often the travel is considered a "fact-finding" excursion. Lawmakers used to be paid hundreds of dollars to give a speech, but that practice was banned in 1989.

"These trips to some extent are suck-up contests to show members a really good time," said Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project, a nonpartisan, anticorruption group. "Bilirakis knows that he can sponge off his special interest groups to get his gambling fix."

Bilirakis said he chooses trips based on which group invites him, the purpose of the event, his professional calendar and personal schedule with his family. The trips are usually three or four days, long weekends, built around congressional votes.

"I'm a homebody," he said. "I like to be home."

The 74-year-old congressman, who says he hopes his son will succeed him when he retires next year, has taken more trips paid for by special interest groups in the past five years than other west-central Florida House members.

Lawmakers take two kinds of trips - those approved by Congress and paid with taxpayer dollars, such as the recent one to Rome for Pope John Paul II's funeral, which Bilirakis did not attend, and those paid for by special interest groups. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has come under fire recently for taking trips financed by private lobbyists, which is not allowed, instead of groups like the ones that paid Bilirakis' bill, which are allowed.

Most of Bilirakis' trips were paid for by the Consumer Electronics Association and the National Association of Broadcasters, which hold national conventions in Las Vegas each year, records show. Others were courtesy of the Pinellas County Osteopathic Medical Society and the Non-Commissioned Officers Association of United States of America.

Jeff Joseph, spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association, said that he understands some guests like to gamble or shop in Las Vegas but that the group offers a rigorous schedule of panels, speeches and tours. "It's not like a golfing trip to Florida," he said. "There's a distinct difference. There is work to be done."

But Joseph did allow that the casinos of Las Vegas are a draw. "I'm sure it helps," he said.

Bilirakis, whose district encompasses much of north Pinellas and Hillsborough counties and the coastal areas of Pasco County, acknowledges most trips include time that has nothing to do with the stated purpose, especially if he is participating in a panel discussion that lasts only two to three hours.

"The rest of the time, how much value is there?" he said. "Most would include time when there isn't value. I'm the first one to admit it. You have to be honest about that."

Bilirakis said he doesn't go to the events just to get a free trip to Las Vegas. He said he can - and does - pay for his trips to Las Vegas about once every two years.

He said he became interested in gambling in the mid 1970s, betting small amounts on blackjack and dice. He said he doesn't like betting on sports or playing cards, but Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, once showed him how to play Texas hold 'em poker on a trip to Las Vegas.

Bilirakis said he doesn't smoke, drink much or play poker and describes himself as a conservative person. And yet he likes to gamble.

"It kind of belies my nature," he said.

Las Vegas ranks as the third-most-popular U.S. destination for lawmakers since 2000, with 165 members traveling to the city, which has one of the largest convention centers in the nation, according to the Political Moneyline Web site.

"It's no secret that part of the allure is that their holding events at nice locales," said Steven Weiss of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

A member of Congress since 1982, Bilirakis has traveled less frequently in recent years, cutting back on trips - though not the ones to Las Vegas.

He has taken at least 11 trips to Vegas since 1990, according to his financial and travel records. He has also gone to New Orleans, Atlanta and Los Angeles, as well as Canada, Bermuda, South Africa and Greece, where his parents were raised.

Bilirakis went to the Kentucky Derby in 1990 and 1991, paid for by the American Horse Council and the Lincoln National Insurance Co. and the Brown and Williamson tobacco company.

His wife, Evelyn, 70, almost always accompanies him. At least once, one of his sons, Emmanuel, a doctor in Palm Harbor, went with him.

The trips include transportation, hotels and meals. Together with his wife, trips to Las Vegas cost $2,500 to $6,000, with airfare the bulk of the cost. Tickets from Washington or Tampa to Las Vegas usually cost more than $1,000. Once, it cost $3,773.

Bilirakis said he doesn't remember the last time he flew first-class on one of these trips. He said the tickets are usually higher priced because he books them at the last minute to accommodate his duties at the Capitol or returns to a city different from the departing city.

He said most invitations come because he is vice chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee - whose members often get attention from groups offering campaign money and free trips - and he was chairman of one its subcommittees.

"You have human beings up here," Bilirakis said. "Some will do it. Some will not. I don't know that those who don't are more honest or more fair."

Times staff writer Bill Adair and researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Anita Kumar can be reached at kumar@sptimes.com or 202 463-0576.

[Last modified May 6, 2005, 14:44:42]