Legislative income

The Democrat-Gazette has made its annual FOIA request regarding the payment of travel/mileage and per diem from each legislator. They'll normally publich an article with a list of the "top 10" legislators who took in the most income for the year (Edit: see below). If you don't know, legislators outside a 50 mile radius of the Capitol are paid mileage and per diem on trips to the Capitol for committee meetings and other legislative business. Legislators within that 50 radius are paid a lump sum. Here's my info for 2008:

2008 Salary: $15,347.00
2008 Per Diem: $2,508.00
2008 Mileage: $2,810.50
2008 Legislative Support Contract: $18,000.00

Total compensation as state representative for 2008: $38,665.00

The legislative support contract is designed for reimbursement of office expenses in my district office (long distance phone calls, postage, staff time devoted to legislative work, etc.); mileage is tied to the federal rate for meetings at the Capitol (292 miles round trip for me), and per diem was $130 in 2008 ($142 now) per day for legislative meetings at the Capitol. I pledged my 2009 raise (~$500) to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of Arkansas.

Correction: Actually, the Democrat-Gazette ran the latest story on this in December, but it covered only 11 months of 2008. It's possible that this data is just being collected for comparison purposes.