Sixteen of the 22 Oita Prefecture assembly members who toured three European countries in fiscal 2026 ran up travel costs above the ¥1 million ceiling set by an agreement among all factions, a Mainichi Shimbun records request has found.
Five of the 16 flew business class or higher. The prefectural budget covered between ¥1.25 million and ¥1.7 million per lawmaker.
Overseas inspections are a system in which local governments send assembly members abroad to study how other places handle administrative problems. Oita runs them irregularly under the heading of overseas research.
How the trips were approved
The fiscal 2026 trips were proposed by a policy review council made up of all factions. In March the assembly's regular session voted by a majority to send members to France, Switzerland and Germany.
The 22 lawmakers — 14 from the Liberal Democratic Party, five from the prefectural citizens' club, and one each from the Shishi no Kai, the Independents' Club and Nippon Ishin no Kai — split into three study groups and visited the countries between April and July.
According to the assembly secretariat, the total cost of the three-country inspection came to…