Soured Junket

Summertime, and the livin' was easy for 53 Illinois state legislators and 60 of their aides. Or at least it was for a while. In July the group junketed off to cool San Francisco for the five-day meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Supposedly the whole venture was strictly business, but it turned out that no one was required to attend any of the sessions. What was more, the Illinois delegation joined more than 50 busloads of conferees for a scheduled winetasting tour of the vineyards of Napa Valley.

The whole venture angered a group of 8,000 Illinois taxpayers known as the Coalition for Political Honesty. They have asked the courts for an injunction forbidding the state to pay any of the estimated $85,000 expenses for the trip.

The indignant legislators insisted that they had worked at the conference, but the taxpayers remained unmoved. Said a spokesman: "We want standards established to protect taxpayers from paying for extravagant trips. It's time the public put its foot down."

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