lt-gov-mike-stack-ece55fbeeafec26c.png

Lt. Gov. Mike Stack has billed the state for more than $4,000 in Philadelphia hotel stays since taking office in early 2015, despite owning a home there at the same time.

(File)

Lt. Gov. Mike Stack has billed the state for more than $4,000 in Philadelphia hotel stays since taking office in early 2015, despite owning a home there at the same time, according to records collected by the media.

Philly.com reported that Stack asked the state to reimburse him for $4,210.69 for hotel stays and incidental expenses in the city. The expenses were incurred from January 2015, when he was inaugurated, to February 2016, when records indicate that he sold the house he owned in the city with his wife.

Stack, a Democrat from Northeast Philadelphia, later reimbursed the state for about half that amount, according to records requested by the Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette under the state's open-records law.

Gov. Tom Wolf administration officials said Stack was asked to pay back just over $1,800 in reimbursements he collected. It was expenses incurred during a time that Stack had not yet officially switched his permanent address from Philadelphia to the taxpayer-funded, Harrisburg-area residence where the lieutenant governor stays. Stack did so in mid-2015.

Matt Franchak, Stack's chief of staff, defended the spending reimbursements in a statement to Philly.com Wednesday night.

Franchak said that although the Stacks owned their Philadelphia property along Wayside Road until early last year, they had moved their furniture and their belongings to the lieutenant governor's residence in Fort Indiantown Gap, outside Harrisburg, right after he was inaugurated.

The issue of Stack's hotel stays comes after Wolf called on Inspector General Bruce Beemer to investigate allegations of verbal abuse from Stack and his wife to their security detail.

Click here to read the full Philly.com story.