State Attorney General Andrea Campbell spent $49 for lunch on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas last fiscal year. We bet she wished she had packed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead.

That lunch bill at the Island Grind, a “go-to coffee and snack spot” at Cyril E. King Airport on the island, is how the Herald knew Campbell went on a junket. We dug deeper — as we did today — to unearth how your tax dollars are being spent.

It’s painstaking work that isn’t easy to pry out of elected officials. Just look at the lengths we went to show you the trips now-indicted Suffolk Sheriff Steven Tompkins’ office went on. He fancied the Bahamas and another resort in Florida, stops at high-end restaurants, and time at Top Golf, as we reported this past week.

We continue to scour taxpayer-paid P-cards, or procurement credit cards, to discover where in the world your elected officials are going on the taxpayers’ dime.

Others are copying our enterprise journalism that has always been based on the foundation of you having a right to know how your tax dollars are being spent.

World leaders need to meet, often in exotic places. Whatever it takes to dial back the nuclear clock, we can accept. But St. Thomas? The Margaritaville Beach Resort, in Nassau, Bahamas?

That trip cost the taxpayers $6,525, of which $1,985 is labelled as for “eating places, restaurants.” We hope the feds ask about that junket when Sheriff Tompkins is grilled in his federal case.

Tompkins was arrested and charged with a pair of felonies related to an alleged extortion scheme a week ago while in Florida. The Sheriff’s Office did not return a request for comment on why the sheriff was in Florida.

We hope the feds put that question to him because Suffolk County — Boston, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop — deserves to know why its sheriff is jetting out of town when the city is in the midst of an opioid crisis.

Too many of our elected officials treat the job and the credit cards that come with most offices as their personal piggy banks. We have more work to do, poring through them, and will post all we’ve dug up, but these expenditures can’t go unchallenged.

The P-cards are there for emergencies and out-of-budget spending. They are not personal jet-setting plastic to spend frivolously.

This is exactly why voters back the ballot question giving the state Auditor permission to audit the state Legislature.

With inflation making a trip to the grocery store cause for a panic attack, every dime spent on Beacon Hill should be justified down to the penny.

Massachusetts has good people working in public office, but they don’t have the clout to stand up to the one-party system. There is absolutely no reason why a Sheriff for Suffolk County should feel the need to jet off to the Bahamas for any junket.

There is a huge difference between campaign funds and taxpayer dollars.

Seeking election and reelection takes a lot of dough, so make your case and hit the circuit to pull in every donation you want. But, when it comes to our hard-earned money, back off.

Tompkins, Campbell, and who knows who else owe the citizens of Massachusetts a refund for any trip deemed unnecessary. Yes, fight crime, pass legislation, keep our environment clean, but quit burning through taxpayer cash.

The Herald will not stop calling out the worst offenders!

Editorial cartoon by Gary Varvel (Creators Syndicate)