Some activity, however, including the 2006 Barcelona visit and a $3,199 stay at Hotel Parco in Rome this year, does not appear tied to any policy-related trips announced by Nunez's office.
In the interview, Nunez said he wouldn't need to use his $5.3-million "Friends of Fabian Nunez" campaign account to offset travel costs if he were independently wealthy. The speaker's job pays $130,062 a year plus a tax-free $170 for expenses each day the Assembly is in session.
"There's not too big a difference," he said, "between how I live and how most middle-class people live."
Politicians are required to periodically disclose to the secretary of state's office contributions to and expenditures from their campaign accounts. Expenses are reported under 27 categories, such as "campaign consultants," "fundraising events" and "candidate travel, lodging and meals." The reporting forms also allow entries to be described in greater detail.
Doug Heller of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa Monica called on Nunez to explain his spending.
"How much political, legislative and governmental work does Fabian Nunez have to do in Barcelona?" Heller said. "If they're legitimate [expenditures], you've got to explain it."
A popular politician from a heavily Democratic district, Nunez ran unopposed in his last election but, as speaker, is responsible for helping fund and manage other Democratic Assembly campaigns.
He received a total of $1.9 million in 2005 and 2006 from unions, corporations and others with a perennial stake in legislative business. They include $17,300 from AT&T and Verizon, phone companies that pushed Nunez legislation allowing them to compete against cable television companies, and $2,500 from a group of pharmaceutical companies affected by a Nunez bill to create a prescription drug discount program.
The State Building and Construction Trades Council of California donated $5,000 in February 2006, one day before a bill it sponsored was introduced in the Assembly.
The state Democratic Party, which unlike officeholders can raise unlimited sums, transferred $4 million to Nunez's campaign account last November.
Nunez occasionally looks beyond his campaign account to pay for travel. In 2006, he reported accepting $12,500 in airfare, meals and lodging from the tax-exempt California Foundation on the Environment and Economy, whose donors include utilities and oil companies with business before the Legislature.
