OHIO: Taxpayer v. Travelers

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Among the chances for honest graft which come a legislator's way, few are more hallowed by time and custom than mileage allowances. U. S. Congressmen get 20¢ per mile for traveling between their homes and the Capitol between sessions, may collect whether they travel or not. Ohio legislators get only 3.6¢ per mile. Vexed perhaps by that discrepancy, Ohio's Representatives did their best to make up for it last week. Meeting for the first time since a "five-minute recess" which began July 22, the House voted to declare that it had held semiweekly "skeleton sessions" since that date, proceeded to enter these sessions in its journal. Thereby each Representative was entitled to collect for 40 round trips between his home and Columbus which he had not taken, at a cost to Ohio taxpayers of $21,507. Dismayed were Representatives when a grudging farmer named Arnett Harbage got wind of this skulduggery, secured an injunction to forestall it. Until he learned that he would have to sue each Senator individually, Taxpayer Harbage, a determined writer of letters-to-the-editor, also considered filing suit to force Ohio Senators to refund $5,557 in mileage allowances which they had already collected by voting fictitious sessions.