A group of four House Republicans – Chris Dorworth of Lake Mary, Steve Crisafulli of Merritt Island, Mike Horner of Kissimmee and Matt Hudson of Naples – is asking state CFO Alex Sink to call an independent investigation of her use of the state plane.

Sink has ordered her office to conduct a “thorough and immediate review” into whether she misused the state plane to pick up and drop off family members. Sink reimbursed the state for the cost of those flights before questions were raised.

Dorworth

Sink said the Office of Regulation should not investigate itself and the lawmakers are asking Sink to apply the same criteria to her office.

“If it’s good for the goose, it should be good for the gander,” Dorworth said in an interview.

Sink’s office responded that they had not yet received the letter and noted that she was “proactive” in paying for her family members to ride on the plane,

Dortworth, meanwhile, said he was not interested in seeking a similar investigation into Republican Bill McCollum’s use of the state plane. Sink and McCollum are expected to face one another in a 2010 race for governor.

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This web video was released this morning by the 527 group “Don’t Bank on Sink,” run by Gainesville businessman Jay Navarrete. The video jumps off this AP story that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink used the state plane to pick up and drop off her husband in Tampa Bay. Sink has re-paid the state for his costs.

But the ad tries to paint Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink as out-of-touch with state taxpayers and pulls footage from her ‘06 campaign in which she promises to end the “spending spree” in Tallahassee.

This story from the Times-Herald, however, shows that Republican candidate Bill McCollum also has his share of questions surrounding his taxpayer-funded travel.

The anti-Sink group’s spokesman, Alachua County Republican Party Chairman Stafford Jones, acknowledged that McCollum isn’t squeaky clean on this issue. But he said Sink, the state’s chief financial officer, should be held to a higher standard.

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A Democratic activist filed an ethics complaintt against Attorney General Bill McCollum yesterday charging the Republican candidate for governor with misuse of the state plane, including a trip to West Palm Beach.

The complaint came later the same day a state employee and Gov. Charlie Crist appointee filed a similar complaint against Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat, for the same thing. Sink is also running for governor.

A Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times investigation found that Sink and McCollum each used the planes dozens of times to ferry them to their homes and not for official state business as required by law.

The complaint against McCollum filed by Kenneth Quinnell, a Tallahassee Democrat, charges that the attorney general’s misuse of the state plane included a trip to West Palm Beach on Feb. 19.

McCollum ordered an empty state plane to pick him up at a private airport in Sanford near his Longwood home in Central Florida. He took the plane to Sarasota then to West Palm Beach. The plane returned to Tallahassee empty, which taxpayers must pay for, and McCollum took the next day, Friday, off.

A Department of Management Services, which oversees the state’s executive aircraft pool, draft audit of Cabinet members’ state plane use found that there was potential abuse by high-priority state officials. But the final audit released to the public did not include that information.

Sink ordered her office to investigate the state plane use.