JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. _ An employee of the Missouri attorney general's office occasionally drove Josh Hawley to campaign-related events in a state-owned car, an arrangement that raises new questions about Hawley's use of taxpayer-funded resources in the run up to his successful bid for U.S. Senate.
Hawley's use of a state-owned car stands in contrast to how Missouri's other statewide elected officials say they utilize such vehicles.
Both state and federal law prohibit any use of public resources for personal or political purposes, but government staffers generally are permitted to do political work on their own time.
A code of conduct manual for the attorney general's office defines state resources as including "an employee's position, time, benefits, state supplied materials, equipment and vehicles."
There are no records of Hawley's Missouri or federal campaigns reimbursing the state for use of a government-owned vehicle for political activity. Federal Election Commission filings do, however, show that Hawley's Senate campaign paid the driver, a state employee, $437 in Sept. 2017 for "security/travel" services.
"The campaign paid what it was billed by the state," Hawley's spokeswoman, Kelli Ford, said in a statement to The Kansas City Star. "We've tallied up the incidental travel and if the state would like to send the campaign an invoice for the estimated $27 for the mileage traveled, we're happy to pay it."
Ford said the state employee's work for Hawley's campaign was "incidental to official AG duties," and consistent with a similar practice under former Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster.
She said Hawley only used the state car and driver "a handful of times" to travel to political activities scheduled around the same time as official events.
Koster's state campaign committee paid the same state employee $1,470.11 for travel expenses in 2014 and $344.98 for travel and security services in 2011, campaign filings show. David Turner, Koster's former campaign spokesman, said any reimbursements were for non-official travel that took place in a personal or campaign vehicle, never a state-owned vehicle. The employee was always required to be off the clock.
Ford declined to provide invoices or exact dates and times of the services rendered to Hawley's campaign by the state employee. But she acknowledged that some of the campaign-related travel took place before Hawley created a federal exploratory committee for his run against incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.
Hawley, a Republican, formed the committee in early August 2017, although GOP efforts to recruit him for the race date to at least April 2017. He officially announced he would run for Senate on Oct. 10, 2017.
"It was a clerical mistake," Ford said of the Senate campaign's payment for driving services prior to August 2017.
"The invoice came in after the Senate committee was started. The staffer who processed it didn't look at the dates of the activity, just the date of the invoice," she said, adding that $187.50 of the $437.50 due was for hours worked prior to the formation of the Senate committee. The $187.50 should have been paid out of Hawley's now-defunct state campaign committee.
Hawley terminated his Missouri attorney general campaign fund on Jan. 31. At the time, there was more than $1 million in cash on hand. Hawley's campaign committee reimbursed several donors, most of it going to Missouri Republican mega-donor David Humphreys and his sister Sarah Atkins, who combined received more than $900,000 in refunds.
The previously unreported information _ that a taxpayer-funded staffer transported Hawley to political activities in a state-owned car _ comes as Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft investigates whether Hawley's use of political consultants in his attorney general's office violated Missouri's prohibition on elected officials spending public funds to support political campaigns.
Ashcroft enlisted the help of Democratic State Auditor Nicole Galloway, whose office has subpoena power and is in the midst of a routine audit of the attorney general's office under Hawley.
The use of state vehicles and drivers comes under scrutiny in such audits.
Asked if there is any permissible use of a state vehicle for personal or political travel, Scott Holste, Galloway's spokesman, said the auditor's office "has made it clear in the past that utilizing state vehicles to transport public officials to political events is improper."
Current statewide elected officials in Missouri say they do not use state vehicles as Hawley did while he was attorney general.
A spokesman for Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Hawley's successor, said he never uses a state vehicle for political business. If his schedule includes both political and official events, Schmitt uses his own car.
"The state vehicle is reserved for the attorney general and executive staff, and anyone who uses the vehicle, Attorney General Schmitt included, is doing so for official business," said spokesman Chris Noelle.
Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe's office said he only uses his own vehicle and is reimbursed for mileage for any official travel. Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick, also a Republican, has not had any official travel since taking office last month, but his spokeswoman said he plans to use his personal vehicle and get reimbursed for mileage.
The auditor's office said it owns one vehicle and it is not used by Galloway.
Ashcroft's spokeswoman said he rides in a state-owned vehicle for official travel, and sometimes has an aide with him. If there are both official and political events on the same day, he uses his personal vehicle. A staff person may volunteer to accompany him, but "that is not considered part of a regular work day as state employees are not allowed to attend campaign activities on state time."
Ashcroft's investigation into Hawley's use of state resources came in response to an October report by The Kansas City Star that revealed out-of-state political consultants gave direct guidance and tasks to taxpayer-funded staff in the attorney general's office. The consultants, who would go on to lead Hawley's Senate campaign, led meetings with staff during business hours in the state Supreme Court building in Jefferson City, where the attorney general's office is located.
Hawley's political consultants communicated with attorney general staff about public business using private emails, a possible circumvention of open records laws. When the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee made open records requests in September 2017 for correspondence with Hawley's political consultants, the attorney general's office said such records did not exist.
More than a month later, after Hawley's election in November 2018, the attorney general's office released 85 pages of records that confirmed such emails did exist, as the Star had reported.
In a letter released with the records on Dec. 21, Hawley's first assistant and solicitor John Sauer noted to Ashcroft's office that that the consultants were not paid for by taxpayers.
As the Star reported in October, there's no evidence that any taxpayer funds were used to pay Hawley's political consultants. Their fees and travel expenses were covered by Hawley's attorney general campaign committee until the creation of the Senate exploratory committee in August 2017.
"Missouri law explicitly authorizes and approves the use of state political committee resources to aid the effective functioning of a public office," Sauer wrote, "and as these documents demonstrate, that is exactly what happened here."
Sauer added that no public funds were ever expended by Hawley's attorney general office for any political campaign.
"And no (attorney general's office) staff," he wrote, "participated in any campaign activity."
