LYNCH

PROVIDENCE — Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch has traveled far and wide — and often — in the last 18 months.

He has been to New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Savannah, Ga., Raleigh, N.C., Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sarasota, Fla., Phoenix, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and even Taiwan, where he spent 10 days last fall.

But what he did on some of these trips, and the total number of days he was away from his office is not clear. Lynch, who has announced his intention to run for governor in 2010, has been unwilling to provide a full accounting of his travels. And state law doesn’t require that he do so.

Of the dozens of trips he has taken since Jan. 1, 2008, 17 were paid for in whole or in part by the state as he traveled to conferences, participated in panel discussions and gave speeches on some of his favorite topics –– such as the dangers to children of “social networking” on the Web –– to groups as diverse as the National Foundation for Women Legislators and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

More than half of these trips were to events hosted by the National Association of Attorneys General, which he headed for a year until his term expired last month.

All told, he was gone from the state for about 63 days –– including some Saturdays and Sundays — on these 17 trips, for which the attorney general’s office paid a total of $12,897, according to records compiled by his office at The Journal’s request. The state was reimbursed for more than a third of these expenses by his hosts, which brought the state’s tab for his travels down to $7,917.

He spent almost double that amount –– more than $14,630 — out of his campaign account on his travels to destinations as near and far as Joe’s American Bar & Grille, in Braintree, Mass.; Café Milano, in Washington; the Bellagio, in Las Vegas; and what he identified as the Batelnut Restaurant, in San Francisco, during the same 18-month period.

The state’s campaign finance law allows him to spend money he raises from defense lawyers, lobbyists, union PACs and others for the purpose of “gaining and holding office.”

He is required to file quarterly reports listing his campaign-related expenses, the payment date and the purpose of each expenditure in the broadest terms, such as “travel and lodging,” “food,” or “entertainment.” Personal use of campaign money is prohibited.

But Lynch has declined to answer questions about these campaign-financed trips, including how long he was gone and what he was doing.

Some of his out-of-state payments are explained on his Board of Elections filing as “fundraising expenses,” but most are not. And some are batched together under the broad heading “petty cash,” which was the only explanation provided, for example, for $500 attributed to a “trip to Denver.”

Lynch campaign spokesman Adam Roach said some of Lynch’s campaign-related travel sprang from his “very active participation” in the National Association of Attorneys General, which “allowed him to introduce himself to a national audience,” and some to his involvement in the Democratic Attorneys General Association, a fundraising organization. Lynch headed the group from 2004 to 2006.

But Roach refused to go beyond this explanation for the frequent trips across the country that Lynch charged in whole or in part to his campaign account:

“Attorney General Lynch has announced his intention of running for governor in 2010. This anticipated campaign has entailed travel and related expenses … as evidenced by the information that our campaign has filed with the Board of Elections listing expenses incurred on trips that Attorney General Lynch has taken to Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.”

Lynch’s filings with the state Board of Elections do not reflect how long Lynch was in each of these cities or when.

For example, expenses he ran up Washington, Virginia, Maryland and California were all dated “2/24/09” — the same day Lynch recorded a $104.71 tab at Providence’s Ten Prime Steak & Sushi, suggesting this was a credit-card payment date rather than the date of a trip.

And Lynch’s office issued a March 2008 advisory opinion that makes it nearly impossible to pin down when any public official is out of state. His office took the position that the daily calendar of a public official is not public record.

But Roach said Lynch has “disclosed every detail about his travel and related expenses that Rhode Island law requires,” and isn’t required to provide any further information. And as long as he reports how much he spent and where he spent it, Robert Kando, executive director of the state Board of Elections, agrees he has likely met the state’s reporting requirements.

Between Jan. 1 and March 31, 2008, Lynch spent an estimated $6,630 out of his campaign account on out-of-state travel. From April 1 to June 30, he spent $4,679; July 1-Sept. 30, $4,318; Oct. 1-Dec. 31, 2008, $1,434, and during the first three months of this year, $2,252. He has not yet filed his campaign fundraising and spending report for the quarter that ended June 30, due at the end of July.

On some of these trips, Lynch press secretary Mike Healey suggests, the attorney general mingled politics and state business.

“Has he done some political stuff on trips that he has taken in his capacity as NAAG president? Yes. Has he used his AG connections to help position himself for a possible run for governor in 2010? Yes,” says Healey.

But tracking how much was spent on Lynch’s behalf on the trips he billed, at least in part, to the state is also a challenge.

Responding last month to a May 18 Providence Journal request for an accounting of Lynch’s travels, Special Assistant Attorney General Michael Field wrote: “To the extent responsive documents exist, agendas have been provided.” But, “in some situations, expenses related to state business were paid directly by an outside organization and the Department of Attorney General has no bill evidencing the cost.”

Some charges were heavily blacked out with a pen, including a $155.84 bill at the Fairmont hotel, in Washington, D.C., in March 2008.

A further complication: Lynch did not always fill out the “out-of-state travel expense reports” that state employees usually file when they travel. His administration director, Christopher Cotta, said this was because other groups often paid his expenses directly, so there was no state expense to reimburse except his meals.

But it appears from information provided by the attorney general’s office that outside groups — including NAAG, to which the state pays $25,000 in annual dues; the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, and the Taiwan government — paid at least $10,912 in travel expenses on his behalf, either directly or by reimbursement, bringing the total amount paid for Lynch’s travels to at least $33,459. The financial disclosure statement that Lynch, like all elected officials in the state, was required to file with the state Ethics Commission for 2008 did not reflect any trips financed by outside organizations. And Jason Gramitt, a staff attorney for the commission, said Lynch would not have been required to report the trips as “gifts” unless they were provided by individuals, businesses or organizations that stood to derive a financial benefit from their relationship with him.

Sometimes, Healey said, there was a measurable return to Rhode Island.

In May 2008, for example, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association paid $428.50 for Lynch’s travel to and from New Orleans to speak about the need to protect children from Internet predators at the organization’s annual “Cable Show,” where other forum topics included: “Who’s Watching What,” and “60 Years of Cable TV: Where Do We Go From Here?”

The state paid $90 for his meals. Healey said the meeting helped “lay the groundwork” for an agreement aimed at blocking access to any Web sites known to host or distribute child pornography sites. The NAAG, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the cable operators signed the agreement in July 2008.

He also cited Lynch’s NAAG-paid trip this past April to give the keynote address at a conference at the University of Mississippi School of Law. While there, Healey said, Lynch picked up information that he subsequently shared with state police about “Operation Fairplay,” a software program that he credits for the arrest a month later of 11 people on child pornography charges.

But Healey was unable to cite a state benefit from the 11-day trip that Lynch took to Taiwan in October 2008, with five other attorneys general from Colorado, Idaho, Indiana and the territories of Guam and American Samoa.

The cost of the trip — $5,271 — was paid by the government of Taiwan.

Healey said Lynch and the other attorneys general with whom he traveled got to meet with Taiwanese judges and prosecutors, and certainly had an opportunity to talk about law enforcement issues of mutual concern, such as “international sex trafficking.” But “I don’t know if sex trafficking is what they talked about,” he acknowledged.

“We are not going to be able to say to you that of the 15, 16 trips that he took, that we can quantify what the return on investment was for everyone. But I think there is unquestionably a benefit to having Rhode Island represented in a leadership role in a national organization,” Healey said. “And when 40 to 50 AGs get together and talk about issues they are bench-marking … they are sharing information, they are stealing each other’s ideas.”

kgregg@projo.com