Gov. Maura Healey mentioned hundreds of {dollars} spent by her workplace with taxpayer-funded bank cards on stays at 4 and five-star motels internationally final fiscal 12 months have been an “appropriate expenditure.”
Healey has traveled throughout the nation and world a number of occasions throughout her first two years in workplace, usually to satisfy with different political or enterprise leaders. Procurement card bills reviewed by the Herald confirmed her workplace stayed at high-end motels a number of occasions throughout these journeys.
At an unrelated occasion Thursday afternoon, Healey defended her selection of motels.
“We don’t pick the location when we go to a place like Quebec. That’s something that the host community designates. So it is what it is,” she advised reporters. “It’s an appropriate expenditure. I think people understand that.”
Healey charged $2,500 in September 2023 to a procurement card for lodging on the Le Chateau Frontenac as a part of her journey to the New England Governors and Japanese Canadian Premiers Convention, in response to state knowledge.
A spokesperson for the governor beforehand mentioned Healey stayed on the luxurious lodge with Chief of Employees Kate Prepare dinner and an government assistant as a result of that was the place “the conference was held.”
Throughout a visit to Rome, Healey and her workers stayed on the four-star Marriott Le Meridien Visconti close to the Vatican, her workplace mentioned. The journey price greater than $30,000 in public funds, of which $14,000 was spent on the lodge, in response to procurement card knowledge from the Workplace of the Comptroller.
The journey to Rome, the place Healey had an viewers with Pope Francis, was paid for with funds from the Massachusetts Tourism Belief Fund, a multi-million greenback account used to advertise tourism within the state that’s seeded with public {dollars}.
On the State Home, Healey mentioned she went to Italy on the invitation of Pope Francis for a local weather summit, one thing she was “not going to turn down.”
“That was an important climate summit, and we were very honored to go,” she mentioned. “When we went up to Quebec, that was at the invitation of the Atlantic Canadian governors. We’re going to be hosting them in September. These kinds of trade alliances, geopolitical alliances, are really important and I’m proud that we were able to go.”
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