Priority of leadership: Pad House slush fund
When times are tough, most folks tighten the belt and do without. For the most part that was the message coming out of Harrisburg during budget negotiations with one whopping exception. Lawmakers busied themselves raiding the Rainy Day Fund, raising cigarette taxes, hiking the landfill tipping fee and fiddling with the capital gains tax while telling everyone that looks to them for assistance, that the budget would be frozen – zero growth – to make up for a $1.3 billion revenue shortfall.
You would think then that a shroud of frugality had fallen onto the General Assembly. You would be wrong.
House leaders sweetened their own slush funds by a colossal 10.5 percent. That kind of increase even in times of plenty ought to be scrutinized. There’s something downright unseemly to now up the ante by $1.2 million and place $12.3 million each in the hands of House Minority Leader H. William DeWeese and House Majority Leader John Perzel to spend as they wish.
They have some explaining to do. But we know by now that it’s more likely the Blizzard of 2002 will blast the region tomorrow than for DeWeese and Perzel to be able to justify this increase.
Their spokespeople attempted to spin the hike.
Said the Republicans: Staff benefits paid from the account went up. So? Didn’t every other facet of government experience the same rise without additional funds?
Said the Democrats in a double spin: It was all the Republicans’ idea. Further since they didn’t use all the money allocated for the budget year just ended, they were simply rolling over $4 million. If the money wasn’t needed, shouldn’t the fund be trimmed rather than padded?
These funds called special leadership accounts are held to little public scrutiny.
Leaders claim that the money is used for personnel, office supplies, computers and such, but the money also pays for such niceties as catered meals, travel and even politically suspect causes such as hiring consultants to promote party ideology and drawing unseemly partisan redistricting maps.
Once again Pennsylvanians witnessed the type of leadership practiced by Perzel and DeWeese: Take care of your own and stick it to everyone else.