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State Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) said Wednesday that she will not return the payments she received from the state as mileage reimbursement while she was driving back and forth to Madison with a suspended license.

Sinicki acknowledged that she had continued to drive to the Capitol without a valid license during part of the current legislative session. But she said she was unaware of the suspended license at the time and wouldn't be returning the mileage money paid for those trips because Assembly rules didn't require it.

"My mileage and per-diem payments are not linked to my driver's license," she said.

A second lawmaker, Rep. Jim Steineke (R-Kaukauna), said Wednesday that he had collected mileage payments while one of his two cars — unknown to him — had a suspended registration because of a parking ticket. But Steineke said he was actually driving his other car during that time.

Wisconsin lawmakers, who are paid $49,943 a year, can receive mileage reimbursement for one round trip a week to the state Capitol during a legislative session. The rate currently is 51 cents a mile.

Sinicki filed for 49 trips in 2013, meaning she would have pocketed more than $4,000 this session in mileage reimbursement. Records for this year were not immediately available.

In October, Sinicki was pulled over by the State Patrol in Jefferson County for operating a vehicle with a suspended driver's license, the fourth time she has been cited for this offense. She failed to appear for her court appearance, and a judge entered a default judgment and fined her in November.

Sinicki said in an interview that she forgot to pay a traffic ticket and didn't realize that her license had been revoked. The conservative website Media Trackers first reported on her latest driving offense.

"I didn't even know about it until it was reported," she said.

Sinicki said that when she realized her mistake, she paid what she owed.

Records show that a Jefferson County judge temporarily suspended her license again on Jan. 22 because Sinicki had failed to pay the $200 fine in the revocation case. Her license was reinstated two weeks later.

In recent years, the Milwaukee Democrat has had a number of financial troubles. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that she filed for bankruptcy last year, has been the subject of three foreclosure actions and was sued by the city for failing to pay property taxes.

She also garnered attention for posting profanities on Facebook about Gov. Scott Walker's "state of the state" address and posting another one directed at U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) during the State of the Union.

Assembly Chief Clerk Patrick Fuller said Sinicki had not brought up the issue of her suspended license to him.

"Our office does not check if a Rep has a driver's license (when) she signs the mileage affidavit," Fuller wrote in an email.

As for Steineke, he was ticketed by a state trooper in June for driving a vehicle with a revoked or suspended registration. The ticket was dismissed two months later when he provided proof of registration.

Steineke said the whole incident came down to his forgetting to pay a parking ticket and then not initially paying all of the additional late fees. He said he paid the balance right away when he learned of it.

Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or dbice@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.