Counting the miles

Pastures District Supervisor Tracy Pyles these days is expanding on a deistic feat, having simultaneously positioned himself at the front of throngs of property owners raging over soaring appraisals and somewhere in the nether reaches of the Sahara among his fellow supervisors. Among the former, Pyles’ voice roars; among the latter, a voice from the grave is stronger.

Persuading only one of his peers when he needed to persuade three that the reassessment should be rolled back to 2005, Pyles has returned to a theme, that of supervisors’ travel expenses, the records for which The News Virginian obtained in advance of Wednesday’s board meeting. Here’s the story they tell: Riverheads District Supervisor Nancy Sorrells was born a traveling woman. From 2005 to 2008, she logged 30,487 miles on the taxpayers’ dime, about 45 percent of the total mileage reported by the current seven supervisors during that time.

The average number of miles traveled over four years by an American driver ranges from 48,000 to 60,000, according to various studies. Sorrells covered more than half of that distance, much of it shuttling 42 miles back and forth from her home to the Government Center, receiving an extra $12,680, almost twice the mileage reimbursement paid to any other supervisor.

Sorrells contends she picked up some of that money driving to National Association of Counties meetings that eventually netted Augusta $140,000 in lieu of taxes on public land. This sounds like a defense. This does not: The county mileage reimbursement, more than 32 cents a mile for two of the three years, “does not cover gas or maintenance,” Sorrells said. Well, then, what does it cover?

Pyles, who was paid $1,428 in reimbursements over three years, sniffs, “Four of us see this as a public service, the other three see it as a job.” An elaboration on his point: Supervisors Larry Howdyshell, Wendell Coleman and David Beyeler traveled more than 32,000 miles and were paid more than $13,000 combined from 2006 to 2008. The average individual miles traveled annually by those three and Sorrells was almost 4,000. The average was 867 for Pyles and supervisors Gerald Garber and Jeremy Shifflett, both of whom were elected in 2007.

Naturally, Pyles has a solution. He wants to eliminate mileage reimbursement for supervisors.

However disdained he may be by his colleagues, Pyles was right to raise questions about the reassessment, a fight he now says he is surrendering, and he is right to demand scrutiny of travel expenses. The sharp disparity between the mileage money paid to Sorrells and to the remaining supervisors warrants closer inspection.

But Pyles, a man of numbers, surely notices the insignificance of the average of $22,000 in mileage reimbursement money paid to supervisors in a budget that stretches annually to more than $100 million. Waste and abuse should be rooted out wherever it can be found. But this doesn’t correspond to a necessity to eliminate reimbursement for legitimate travel expenses incurred on the county’s behalf.

Of course, there’s nothing to prevent Pyles himself from forgoing the money. The remaining supervisors would be unlikely to vote or volunteer to follow suit, but in their travels they should know that in addition to the thorn among them, we’ll be looking closely at the records and counting the miles.