Nathaniel Herz did a great job uncovering this. This question for Alaskans is would the State belong to these organizations even if Gary Stevens had never been elected to public office? Most likely yes. It's really no different than your local government belonging to the Alaska Municipal League. So Sen Gary spent his own money to go talk to members of the world's largest democracy about natural gas-good idea. NYTimes had a piece this week over cows dying from smog there. Nathan did good. Gary did good not spending state money for travel, saying "none of your business" was a poorly chosen phrase. More legislators need to spend their own money for travel, but if you tell others you're a State Senator it's kinda our business.