Feb 11, 2008 3 min read

I would like to respond to Mr. Greg Leather’s letter. Mr. Leathers questions whether it is true that state Rep. Bill DeWeese spent over a million dollars to hold on to his seat. I stand by my statement. His financial records are public. If Mr. Leathers is implying that the record is blurry and one cant examine a record of a long-time incumbents campaign expenditures and get a clear picture, he is absolutely correct. The money trail is hard to follow. Huge contributions were made, with over 95 percent of contributions coming from outside of our district. Special interest groups and lobbyists were the biggest piece of the pie. Money was moved around, shifted, gifted and manipulated.

The problem is across the board. It is not a Republican or Democratic issue. It is how our system is set up, and many incumbents want to keep it that way. Our political system in Pennsylvania needs a massive overhaul. In 2006, I campaigned on open records, reducing the size of a bloated legislature, eliminating an unfair property tax, campaign finance and lobbyist disclosure.

Because of the public outcry and demand for change, a record number of new legislators were elected into office in 2006. Pennsylvanians have demanded open records and we may have a bill passed soon. A brand new representative, Tim Mahoney (D-Fayette), introduced that bill. Who says that new lawmakers don’t have any pull? (I believe the bill doesn’t go far enough, however. Why, in 2008, will it not include e-mail correspondence? The importance of e-mail records was recently demonstrated in the ever growing Bonusgate scandal.)

Activists also demanded lobbyist disclosure. Now, lobbyists have to register with the state. We are no longer the only state without any lobbyist disclosure laws.

Our state still has the second-largest legislature in the nation. During a debate I had with him in 2006, Mr. DeWeese was opposed to shrinking its size. But, just recently, in an attempt to distance himself from Bonusgate, he blamed the huge size of the Democratic Caucus as a reason for his leadership not knowing about the taxpayer-funded bonuses. What’s wrong with this picture?

If this happened in the private sector, where millions of dollars were misused, and the boss claims he did not know what was going on or he was “asleep at the switch,” he’d be fired. If he was an accomplice, he’d be fired.

Citizens need to demand accountability. Which brings me back to the original intent of this response: If public money was illegally used to fund political campaigns, how much did these entrenched incumbents really spend in order to hold on to their seats?

Greg Hopkins

Nineveh