Boucher's $140,000 franked mail tab in 2009 was the seventh-highest in House

A new public radio station. A cultural heritage center for Bristol’s Birthplace of Country Music. A veterans cemetery that would be the first in Southwest Virginia.

U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher has made all of those projects possible by securing $10 million in federal money, and he wants his constituents to know.

A recent mailing to Bristol residents from Boucher might be self-promotional – it is studded with references to the 9th District Democrat’s role in procuring the money, and features him in four photos – but it is not campaign literature. The italicized print in the upper left hand corner designates the mail as “official business,” prepared and mailed at taxpayer expense. Last year, Boucher was among the most prolific congressional users of franked mail, a legislative privilege that allows lawmakers to send mail through the U.S. Postal Service with their signature in place of a stamp.

Boucher’s office spent $140,320 on franked mail last year – the seventh-highest total in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to expenditure data scraped from a 3,400-page House report by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation and analyzed by the Bristol Herald Courier.

A congressman in the middle of the pack of franking expenses would have spent $34,842, and the average for the chamber – including expenses from lawmakers who did not serve all of 2009 – came out to $41,681.

“That surprises me,” Boucher said when informed that he ranked near the top of the list of the highest franked mail expenditures. “To the extent that there was any unusual activity in the franking account last year, it was because of the prominence of the health care debate. I had a very clear sense that because of the level of public interest, I had to have three town meetings devoted to health care, and I informed everyone in the district,” he said of meetings in Abingdon, Dublin and Hillsville.

Boucher described franking as “an invaluable communications tool.”

House representatives receive an allowance of public money that varies according to the distance between Washington, D.C., and the farthest point in their districts, and the office rental rates in their districts. The allowance for official mail is based on the rate to send single-piece mail first-class in a legislator’s district.

Boucher’s 2009 cost for franked mail made up 10 percent of his total $1.35 million in expenditures, second only to staff salaries; his allowance was for $1.46 million. Chamberwide, representatives billed taxpayers for $18.5 million in franked mail last year.

As a point of local contrast, U.S. Rep. Phil Roe, R-Johnson City, devoted a much smaller portion of his allowance to franked mail, spending only $6,812 out of his $1.12 million in expenditures; Roe’s allowance was for $1.45 million.

“That was one of the congressman’s big things he wanted to be responsible for: Keeping our costs low and being responsible with those taxpayer dollars,” Amanda Little, communications director for the first-term Tennessee congressman, said by phone Friday.

Ranked among their colleagues by total expenses – including staff salaries and benefits, travel, utilities and printing costs – Boucher was in the top third, while Roe was in the bottom 10 percent.

Franking as a legislative privilege is designed to “assist and expedite the conduct of the official business, activities and duties” of the U.S. Congress, according to U.S. House regulations.

Boucher’s recent mailing to Bristol constituents referenced three projects for which he secured funding, and a note about legislation he is co-sponsoring to help balance the federal budget. Though the letter contains repeated personal references – such as “at my urging” and “I” – the content is well within the guidelines of the Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards.

Still, the franking privilege can blur the lines between a lawmaker briefing constituents on official business and burnishing his own accomplishments, House guidelines and analysts indicate. The regulations, for instance, caution against the “excessive use of personally phrased references.”

“It’s not always clear what is a legitimate purpose of informing constituents and what’s self-promotion,” said Isaac Wood, an editor at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, who studies U.S. House elections and Virginia politics.

Wood said there are two primary reasons legislators use franked mail: to boost name recognition and explain the benefits of their votes. Name recognition for Boucher should not be a problem, Wood noted: “You’d have to be living under a rock for 27 straight years to not know who he is.”

Politically, franking mail is a double-edged blade, Wood said: An incumbent can cast it as a valuable public service to educating constituents, while a challenger could point out that he’s doing it on the taxpayer’s dime.

“I think that right now, franking could be very dangerous,” Wood said. “It could be seen as a political insider tool.”

With the political environment souring for Democrats, several Republicans and one independent candidate have emerged to challenge Boucher in the 2010 House race, led most prominently by Virginia House of Delegates Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, a Salem Republican.

Asked how he would respond to challenges that he is using franked mail to give him an electoral edge, Boucher said, “I would contest the notion that this is some kind of perk. People do expect that members of Congress would communicate with them. What I’m doing is not related to elections.”

Boucher pointed out that he represents 23 counties and four cities, and that he holds a town hall meeting in each jurisdiction every year. Most of his Saturdays are spent at town hall meetings, he said, and he sends notices advising constituents of the events.

Most of the franked mail is devoted to personal correspondence, and if 2009 franking expenses were high, he attributes them to the high level of interest in health care legislation.

“We had a tremendous volume of mail on the health care issue. The numbers of contacts ran into the thousands. I answered each one of those letters,” he said.

Boucher credited the high attendance at the three health care town hall meetings to sending out franked notices to constituents, noting that 1,600 people attended the meeting at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon – a record crowd for the grand conference hall.

“Had it not been for the notices, we would not have had that kind of turnout,” he said.

Boucher also sends out tens of thousands of 30-page annual reports of congressional activities – a line item with a cost he estimated at $25,000.

“I think the town meetings are tremendously valuable,” Boucher said. “Some of the best ideas I get for writing legislation are presented by people who attend my hearings.”

He added, “Some members of Congress get criticized because they don’t stay in touch. I will never be accused of that.”

dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558

EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS CORRECTED AT 10:34 A.M. ON MARCH 6, 2010 TO REFLECT THAT THE SUNLIGHT FOUNDATION PULLED DATA FROM A U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES REPORT. THE MEDIAN SPENDING ON FRANKED MAIL WAS CORRECTED AT 1:48 P.M. ON MARCH 8.