Larry Craig paid bonuses to staffers

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.idahostatesman.com/localnews/story/973852.html

People who stayed with the senator despite the scandal were rewarded.
BY ERIKA BOLSTAD - [e-mail]
Copyright: © 2009 Idaho Statesman
Published: 11/15/09

WASHINGTON - Payroll records show that a handful of top aides in former Sen. Larry Craig's Senate office received handsome increases - one received as much as $36,000 - if they stayed with the Idaho Republican from the fall of 2007 through his retirement last January.

Craig, who spent 27 years in the House and Senate, saw his career as an elected official come to an ignoble end after his June 2007 arrest in a sex sting in a men's room of the St. Paul-Minneapolis Airport. snip

Senators have wide discretion in how they award pay from their taxpayer-funded office accounts. Technically, they are prohibited from paying outright bonuses. Instead, the extra money is classified as a pay raise. So it is not possible to determine from the payroll records whether some of the money covered pay raises or other money due employees - including unused vacation or sick time. However, Craig would have had to approve such lump-sum payments personally, according to the secretary of the Senate's office.

Craig's former chief of staff, Mike Ware, confirmed that the office awarded pay raises to serve as bonuses.

[tanyev]

1. "Senators have wide discretion"

And Sen. Craig's is wider than anyone else's!

[Lucky Luciano]

2. LOL! yup! Particularly his indiscretions! What a tool!. nt

[kanrok]

3. LOL

n/t

[Turbineguy]

4. Enough for

some new shoes?

[Go2Peace]

5. Amazing all of the "special rules" that senators make for themselves. Bet "regular" managers don't

have this ability. It is usually not easy to give someone a raise in government without clear justification of why they are underpaid and multiple approvals. But senators, they get their own set of rules.