A March 21 report in Starkville Daily News reported financial details of aldermen travel expenditures on taxpayer’s money. 
“A pair of Starkville aldermen have racked up a combined $17,970.04 in taxpayer-funded travel since the new board took office on July 1, according to records Starkville Daily News obtained from the city.”
First-term Ward 2 Alderman Lisa Wynn has logged $8,997.72 in travel expenses paid from city funds, leading all city officials — elected and non-elected — since July 1. Second-term Ward 7 Alderman Henry Vaughn ranks a close second in that timeframe, logging $8,972.52 in city-paid travel expenses.
Zack Plair, editor of Starkville Daily News, said as part of Sunshine Week every year, Starkville Daily News requests open records from various agencies in an effort to test compliance with open records laws.
“We also want the information we obtain to be something relevant to our readers. This year, we requested the travel expenses from the city of Starkville and Oktibbeha County,” Plair said in an email. “At the time we requested the information from the city, four city officials whom incidentally accounted for the top four officials in taxpayer-funded travel in Starkville were in Washington D.C. for a National League of Cities conference. We simply requested the information from the city clerk’s office, and I later confirmed that both the mayor and chief administrative officer were aware of the request. Within the seven-day timeframe, the law offers for agencies to respond to an open records request. The city produced the records we requested without incident. The county did the same.” 
Former city administrator Lynn Spruill said the board sets the budget for travel in the annual budgeting process.
“The specific travel destinations are set as the requests come from the individual aldermen. The travel in the past was mostly travel to the Mississippi Municipal League conferences both the mid-winter in Jackson and the summer conference in Biloxi,” Spruill said. “As long as the Board of Aldermen approve the travel requests, the law allows it. It is up to the good conscience of the elected official to determine if the travel that they have planned is a valid expenditure of the taxpayer’s dollars,” Spruill said. 
Plair said in putting the story together, it was important for SDN not to present the information in a manner that made the paper look like it was indicting these city or county officials for their spending.
“For what it’s worth, we did not take that position at all. Instead, we wanted to ensure that the officials had an appropriate opportunity to explain the importance of the travel, where they went and what benefit they felt the citizens received from it, and explain (in the city’s case) why two aldermen outpaced the rest in travel expenses. From there, we wanted to place squarely in each reader’s hands the responsibility of interpreting whether they thought it was necessary spending. I’d wager there were a number of people who fell on both sides of that argument, as is true for any argument involving government spending,” Plair said.
Ward 7 Alderman Henry Vaughn Sr. declined to comment on the story. 
Spruill said the regular Mississippi Municpial League conferences offer opportunities for the elected officials to learn valuable information that enhances their ability to do the job.
“I have no ability to opine on what they might have gained by going to NLC or to Washington, D.C,” she said. 
Former Ward 2 Alderman Sandra Sistrunk said her board had an annual budget of $18,000 for all travel, and most travel was to MML events.
“The MML events are in-state and focus on education, networking, that sort of thing. The end of the term there were national events attended. This board increased their travel budget to $30,000 but may exceed that. The reason I think they may exceed the $30,000 budget is that they’ve clearly spent nearly that much and this year’s big MML event is in June. Expenditures for June’s MML conference would be accounted for in this year’s budget,” Sistrunk said.