Republican says Democrat A-G approved questionable expenses

The Republican candidate for state Attorney General says the Democrat who now holds the job has approved “tens of thousands” of dollars worth of questionable expenses for an attorney monitoring the federal case against Microsoft. David Millage, a lawyer from Bettendorf who’s the G-O-P candidate for Attorney General, says Democrat Tom Miller has approved paying 16-hundred dollars a month to rent an apartment in D-C for deputy state attorney general Layne Lindebak. Millage says the state also paid for the man’s dry cleaning bills and his food.Millage says Lindebak ate at some of the finest restaurants in the nation’s capitol — at taxpayers’ expense. One voucher was for a 70-dollar dinner. Another covered a grocery bill for things like pate and gouda cheese. Millage calls the expense payments inappropriate, especially at a time when the state budget’s so tight. He says agencies are taking cuts while we see these kind of “frivolous” expenses coming out of the Attorney General’s office.Attorney General Miller says Millage has the facts wrong. Miller says Layne Lindebak was an “active participant” in the case, and it was cheaper to rent the apartment for 16-hundred dollars a month rather than have him rack up a four-thousand dollar hotel bill. Miller says Layne was allowed 45-dollars-a-day in food expenses. Miller says if Lindebak had claimed the full amount, he would have claimed four-thousand dollars over the four months he worked on the case. Instead, Layne’s food bill was just under a quarter of that amount — nine-hundred-88 dollars. Miller says Lindebak worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week, and only returned to Iowa once during that four month period when he came home for Easter.