Stories indexed with the term ‘travel spending’

Editor’s note: HD, a.k.a. Dave Askins, editor of The Ann Arbor Chronicle, is also publisher of an online series of interviews on a teeter totter. Introductions to new Teeter Talks, like this one, also appear on The Chronicle’s website.

Even if all you do is stare right into your own belly button, you can still wind up thinking about drinking too much Diet Coke out of a hotel minibar in Tel Aviv.

Let’s start close to home, at 618 S. Main St. in Ann Arbor, Mich. That’s where local developer Dan Ketelaar is currently planning a six-story residential project – it will consist of about 180 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments.

It’s also the former location of Fox Tent & Awning.

Gazing into my navel, I think of Teeter Talk’s history with that business. Back in 2007, I pedaled my bicycle trailer, loaded with a wooden teeter totter, into Fox Tent & Awning. There, Lynda, Don, and Diane measured out and sewed together a custom canvas cover for the totter plus trailer rig. Teeter Talk was ready to leave my back yard. It was ready to travel.

That’s right, travel. Ever wonder how much the U.S. government spends on travel to Ann Arbor? Maybe you never wondered that because you figured the answer is hard to find.

Yet in about 15 minutes, using an online searchable repository of federal travel records available on JunketSleuth.com, here’s what I learned: For a roughly three-year period from 2008 to 2010, at least $847,970 in federal money from 11 different federal agencies was spent on 970 trips to Ann Arbor, Mich. [Google Spreadsheet with summary Ann Arbor JunketSleuth data]

Chris Carey is editor and president of BailoutSleuth.com, which operates JunketSleuth. And Carey lives in Ann Arbor, so it worked out that he was able to join me as a guest on the teeter totter back in mid-October.

Now, the financier of the enterprise, Mark Cuban, is to my knowledge not fascinated with a little college town like ours. So the point of the JunketSleuth enterprise is not to document federal spending on travel to Ann Arbor. JunketSleuth describes itself as an “independent Web-based news site aimed at exposing travel patterns of U.S. government employees.” So JunketSleuth.com is more interested in looking at the travel patterns of people – people like Securities and Exchange Commissioner Kathleen Casey, whose bill at a Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel included (for one day) $24 worth of Coke and Diet Coke.

To summarize, traveling from my belly button to Tel Aviv cost you right around 350 words – a real bargain by Chronicle standards. For readers whose final destination is actually Carey’s complete Talk, thanks for flying with The Chronicle. At your final destination, you’ll find topics like the challenges facing journalists today, how Carey wound up in Ann Arbor, and what he has in common with Chronicle sports columnist John U. Bacon.

For those who are continuing with us here on The Chronicle, I’ve pulled one theme out of his Talk to highlight here: the culture of spending taxpayer money. [Full Story]