DeWeese covers his rear using tax money
House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, D-Greene, has pledged to divert “substantial” tax money from his Harrisburg slush fund to more beneficial uses. Sounds good, but not if DeWeese has in mind spending taxpayers’ money on a Washington consultant to do damage control in a grand jury probe of staff bonuses.
The General Assembly’s bill to taxpayers for responding to the Bonusgate scandal has now topped $1 million, it was reported yesterday.
It’s not hard to envision the day when DeWeese and his pals will have spent more taxpayer dollars to clean up this ethical mess than the $3.6 million in tax money that legislative leaders spent on the secret bonuses.
House Democrats handed out $1.9 million in bonuses to 717 staffers in 2006, which was more than half of the total spent by the House and Senate.
Attorney General Tom Corbett is probing whether those bonuses were rewards for political campaign work, which would be illegal.
The biggest covering-their-rears expenditure comes courtesy of DeWeese, who perhaps has the most rear-covering to do. He has spent more than $710,000 in the past year on Washington consultant William Chadwick, a Republican specialist in “risk management.” Chadwick bills customers $400 per hour. Nice.
A former assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, Chadwick was brought in before Corbett began investigating. Chadwick helped craft a new code of conduct for the legislature and held ethics seminars. But as the grand jury probe heated up, he also has been dealing with that.
DeWeese has paid an additional $150,000 to a Philadelphia firm for its work on the matter. And he’s paid nearly $500,000 of taxpayers’ money from his discretionary account to 10 other firms in the past year. Some of that work was related to Bonusgate, but his office won’t say how much.
House Republicans have spent about $91,000 on a Pittsburgh law firm to represent them in the matter. Senate Republicans and Democrats have spent less than that on outside lawyers.
DeWeese has said he didn’t know about the bonuses at the time, although his caucus led the way. And now House Democrats are leading the way in frittering away more taxpayer dollars in response to the embarrassment.
Legislative leaders have piles of money to waste on such things because they’ve amassed a kitty of more than $200 million in recent years.
Until the legislature kills this slush fund, Pennsylvanians will keep paying a hidden tax for wretched government.