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How would you like to have an eight thousand dollar stipend to pay for traveling from your home to your office? Lt. Governor Carlos Lopez Cantera’s office is in the state Capitol, but as Mike Vasilinda tells us, the Lt. Governor has managed to arrange work related state paid trips to and from his Miami home most every weekend…and when he hasn’t traveled, it’s because he never made it to the Capitol that particular week.

Since being sworn in in January, Lt. Governor Carlos Lopez-Cantera has made 24 trips to or from his home in Miami at taxpayer expense. The price tag…just under 8 thousand dollars.

Miami is where the Lt Governor’s family still lives, and most trips there were are on Thursdays or Fridays, and return trips to the Capitol, often a week or two later, are on Monday or Tuesdays. Peter Butzin, Board Chair for Common cause calls the trips questionable.

“You know, what we’ve got here is either an egregious abuse of state travel policy or a remarkable coincidence.”

Lopez Cantera, is a millionaire six times over and while jobs events are sited as a reason for some trips,  Lopez Cantera has stopped showing up. On July 7th, Rick Scott touted job creation in nearly Hollywood Fl.

But the Lt. Governor was nowhere to be found that day

In June we also reported that the Lt. Governor works just about a third of the time, logging 368 Hours since January while people working 40 hour weeks put in 968 hours on the job.

Lopez-Cantera is expected to announce that’s he’s running for the U-S Senate, so the big question is…will he resign his Lt. Governor’s gig.?

“That’s a decision he’ll make” Rick Scott said last week.

But democratic Spokesman Max Steele has another take on it all.

“Is that the message he want to take to the US Senate that he’s going to live large on the taxpayers dime and not show up for work?”

Travel records for the Attorney General and Commissioner of Agriculture, both of whom maintain residences in other counties, are less than one fourth of the Lt. Governor;s. Lopez -Cantera is expected to announce his Senate Plans on Wednesday.