Supervisors who did make the trip to Washington, D.C., were each reimbursed $65 for parking their cars at the airport.

Three supervisors — Hutchins, Grennell and Butler — received $90.39 for a hotel room in Baton Rouge on the way to D.C. The same three supervisors received a total of $220 — $120 for Grennell and $50 for the others — for “other travel costs.”

Carter said he did not spend as much on the NACO trip because he arrived after the rest of the supervisors. He did not have a Baton Rouge hotel room or other travel costs. His airline ticket was slightly more expensive than the others, but he still spent $213 less than Hutchins and Butler.

“I don’t necessarily go from the very start to the very end, but I try to go and catch the important things and then go back home,” Carter said.

As a veteran board member, Lazarus likewise didn’t attend the 2011 new supervisor orientation in Jackson, which cost the county $1,264.30. Along with Hutchins, Butler and Carter are first-term supervisors.

County Administrator Joe Murray, who was hired in 2011, also attended the orientation.

At that conference, Butler and Carter had hotel bills of $104, while Grennell and Hutchins had bills for $77.

All of the supervisors except Lazarus attended the Mississippi Association of Supervisors meeting in Biloxi, for which the county paid $4,053.

While the rest of the supervisors paid $462 for their hotels, Hutchins paid $344.97 for her stay.

Lazarus said he had planned to attend the conference, but a family situation arose and he was forced to cancel.

Butler, Grennell and Hutchins all attended the Mississippi Association of Supervisors-Minority Caucus education conference in Vicksburg.

Hutchins spent $352.75 on the trip, while Butler spent $522.15 and Grennell spent $245.80.

Grennell said his reimbursements were lower than the two other supervisors who attended the conference because he only went for one day.

The MAS-MC is an organization within the Mississippi Association of Supervisors that provides educational and combined lobbying opportunities for counties, Hutchins said.

That lobbying included going to Jackson to show support for road and bridge projects in rural counties, she said.

Butler said sessions at the conference discussed how new laws that were being debated in the legislature at that time could affect counties; one of those sessions included a discussion of the financial impact charter schools would have on county boards.

Grennell said the conference also provided information about various agencies and grants that could be beneficial to the county.

Grennell and Hutchins traveled to the 2012 Mississippi Planning and Development Districts meeting in Biloxi.

Murray spent $1,073 attending the Biloxi conference, an administrator’s conference in Jackson, an educational workshop and the Mississippi Municipal League Conference in Vicksburg.

Murray said continuing education is an important part of staying ahead of problems and finding creative solutions.

“If the supervisors have a conference, and it is available to me, I am going,” he said. “I enjoy my classes, I enjoy being able to meet with different administrators and comptrollers and being able to bounce things off of people.

“We talk about different things that are going on in different counties and pose questions to each other.”

Likewise, attending a conference and meeting with someone face-to-face can have advantages that speaking by phone or communicating by letter cannot, Murray said.

Carter said he believes travel is important but he hopes the public will always hold the supervisors accountable for what they do with public funds.

When he goes on a trip, Carter said he makes sure someone will write a report for the public, and — if no one else is — he will. Carter and other supervisors have submitted these reports as Top of the Morning columns in The Natchez Democrat.

“We try to let them know what we have done and what we have brought back to them,” he said.

Both Carter and Butler said they do not expect to travel as much in the future as they have this year.

“The good thing about traveling early on coming into office is you learn a lot, and once you learn a lot you start implementing and that can cut your travel down in the future,” Butler said.

“I feel it is good to get it out early coming in, and then you can determine which ones you really need to go to and which ones you may not have to go to.”

All of the supervisors listed some way they believed they had found to save the county money through their traveling, and Grennell said travel should be evaluated in light of what the supervisors bring back to Adams County, both in terms of effectiveness and efficiency based on what they learned at a conference, and in terms of money.

Having face-to-face meetings can sometimes help speed a process along as well, Murray said, and at the Biloxi conference he spent several hours discussing with Mississippi Emergency Management Agency officials how to get FEMA to reopen the county’s reimbursement program for the 2011 flood to help with a flood-caused erosion problem on Jackson Point Road that had not been detected at the time the program was closed out.

Murray said that face-to-face meeting would go a long way into helping the county get the road fixed with some reimbursement.

“When we went to the NACO conference, we technically brought back $190,000 for erosion problems in Natchez-Adams County,” Grennell said. “A lot of times we bring back money with us as a result of attending these meetings.”

“When I want to get something done, it’s not like I can go to sleep and dream it; I have to go and get it. You have to go and get involved, you have got to go and network.”

Click here for a PDF of Mississippi’s official travel policy.