Page 41 - 0420

Groton Daily Independent
Friday, April 20, 2018 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 280 ~ 41 of 43
Ferguson, the senior adviser to Pruitt, said “there was no wasted time” on Pruitt’s commutes between Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
“He was working, reviewing documents, on the phone,” Ferguson said.
Overall spending on travel by Pruitt’s office averaged about $270,000 a year in his last four years as Oklahoma’s attorney general, up 26 percent from his predecessor’s final year in office. The figures do not include a total for Pruitt’s trips alone. The attorney general’s office spent $201,000 on travel during his predecessor’s last year in the office.
The calendars are heavily redacted and entire days are blacked out.
But the records do show Pruitt frequently traveled to Washington to speak to groups including the Fed- eralist Society; the Club for Growth, a free-enterprise advocacy group; and an anti-abortion rally. He also made similar appearances elsewhere, such as one before the small-government FreedomWorks group in Cleveland on “Battling the Regulatory State.”
“If it’s not state-related, then the state should not be responsible for” the cost, said Jones, the state auditor. “You can’t use any public assets for personal or political reasons.”
Records show many of the trips occurred during the workweek, when Pruitt was drawing a state salary of $132,000. Oklahoma broadly bans first-class tickets for state employees. The travel records show only one first-class flight for Pruitt, with a scrawled note on it showing Pruitt’s campaign paid for it.
Edmondson, who is now running for governor, said his travel expenses as attorney general typically covered national and regional conventions of attorneys general.
“I think you’ll find that his out-of-state travel would far exceed any other attorney general” in Oklahoma, said former Gov. David Walters, a Democrat, who recalled Pruitt speaking before local clubs on topics such as the Obama administration, rather than crime or consumer fraud in Oklahoma.
Conservative groups hosting Pruitt appeared to reimburse most of Pruitt’s flights and some other direct state travel expenses after 2015, and some beforehand.
But on one trip in January 2016, Pruitt billed taxpayers more than $1,000 for a trip to Washington in which he held separate meetings with executives of three conservative think tanks: the APP Foundation, The Federalist Society and Club for Growth. There was no record of reimbursement for that trip. Three weeks later, Pruitt spent the weekend in California for a dinner and a speech to The Federalist Society, which reimbursed the state for his travel.
Asian shares fall back on trade worries, tech outlook By YOUKYUNG LEE, AP Business Writer
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Shares are lower in Asia after a major supplier to Apple forecast continued weak demand for mobile devices. A warning by the head of the IMF over the potential for trade tensions to harm global growth also weighed on sentiment.
KEEPING SCORE: Japan’s Nikkei 225 edged 0.1 percent lower to 22,183.05, shedding early gains. South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.3 percent to 2,478.38 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.4 percent to 30,579.54. The Shanghai Composite Index slumped 1.2 percent to 3,080.01. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 retreated 0.2 percent to 5,870.10. Stocks in Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia also declined.
APPLE SUPPLIERS: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plunged 5.5 percent in Taiwan after the key Asian Apple supplier gave a lower-than-expected revenue forecast for the second quarter of $7.8 bil- lion-$7.9 billion. The company predicted demand in the mobile sector would remain weak. Other Apple suppliers also traded lower. South Korea’s LG Display Co. lost 0.8 percent and Samsung Electronics Co., tumbled 1.7 percent.
ANALYST’S TAKE: Weak guidance from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a major supplier to Apple, brewed concerns of weak iPhone demand, dragging technology shares lower, Jingyi Pan, a market strategist at IG in Singapore, said in a commentary. “The corresponding impact would certainly be watched into the Asian session today with the supply chain sprawled across the region.”
TRADE: The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, is urging countries to work out