State Senator John Cauthorn, R-Mexico, this week conferred a Golden Goose Egg on Governor Holden and his office for allowing other state agencies to help fund a persistent habit of taking to the air on state-owned aircraft.

"The skies may be friendly, but they're also expensive," Cauthorn noted. "Apparently when these costs were brought up, the governor chose to send the bills to other departments a shell game if I ever saw one, and one that still costs taxpayers the same outrageous amount, no matter how many places the bills are buried."

Immediately after taking the oath of office in January of 2001, Holden created an impressive contrail of headlines by jetting across the state several times a week on trips that often returned him and his entourage to the same city twice in one day and others that would have been much quicker and far less expensive had he taken to Missouri's often talked about but predominantly under-maintained roads.

As outlined in a recently published state auditor's report (sizable enough to require the purchase of two coach-class seats), a review of the governor's flights for 2001 showed a marked change in how the Office of Governor paid for flights from the first half to the second half of the year. Amazingly, throughout 2001 as outrage over gubernatorial flights mounted, other state agencies increasingly paid the costs of the governor's flights.

The review shows 113 flights, totaling $117,692, for the governor in 2001. In the first half of that year, the Office of Governor paid 95 percent of the flight costs. However, in the second half of the year, the Office of Governor only paid 59 percent of the flight costs, shuffling the other 41 percent to 12 other state agencies. Also in the second half of the year, other state agencies paid the entire cost of nearly a full third of the total flights shuttling the governor.

"As defense, members of the governor's staff claimed it was normal for a state agency to pay the entire cost of a flight when it had to do with agency issues," Cauthorn said. "But interestingly, this questionable practice didn't become 'normal' until after June of 2001, about the time flight-gate was reaching its zenith."

Cauthorn noted that the never-landing flight abuse saga is but one of several dubious practices highlighted in the governor's office audit, available on the Internet at: http://www.auditor.state.mo.us/press/2003-34.pdf

"You'll have to block out a pretty good chunk of time if you're going to get through all of it," Cauthorn said of the full report. "I guess you could say it makes for some absorbing, if not appealing in-flight reading."

Patterned after "Golden Fleeces" once prodigiously awarded by a U.S. Senator for jaw-dropping incidents of federal fiscal malfeasance, Cauthorn began handing out Golden Goose Eggs earlier this year. The state's mental health department and treasurer's office are two recent egg recipients.