BUCKS STOP HERE
How Delco pols deliver $3M-plus as part of annual Pa. budget plan
Conservative think-tank the Commonwealth Foundation is criticizing Pennsylvania’s oddly worded fiscal code for the inclusion of approximately $35 million in earmarks.
“These earmarks slipped into the little-known fiscal code just before it’s passed with obscure wording makes them nearly impossible to decipher,” said Commonwealth Foundation Vice President and COO Nathan Benefield. “Regardless of the merit of these programs, this lack of transparency is a black mark on the budget process.”
Delaware County’s provisions include $500,000 for an antiviolence task force, $200,000 toward a workforce development program for veterans and $500,000 for Cheyney University, according to the Commonwealth Foundation analysis.
The code also provides $2 million to “a county nursing home located in a home rule county that was formerly a county of the second class A with more than 725 beds and a Medicaid acuity at 0.79 as of August 1, 2015.”
In plain language, that is the Fair Acres Geriatric Center, the county-run nursing home.
“The person who doesn’t follow this stuff day to day is going to be hard pressed to figure out what that actually means,” said Commonwealth Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Bob Dick. “There’s a lack of transparency regarding this process.”
The language is essentially a work-around of a provision in the state Constitution called the “special legislation clause,” which prohibits the General Assembly from conferring a special benefit or privilege on any person or group at the exclusion of others.
Jennifer Kocher, spokeswoman for the Senate Republican Caucus, said courts have consistently held that the code does not violate that provision, however, because it could be referring to more than one entity. She added that the fiscal code is a “far, far cry” from the days of “walking around money,” or WAMs, which came with no legislative record whatsoever.
“It’s actually more transparent, because it’s there in the public view of how the money’s to be spent, as opposed to just being spent by the administration however they feel like it,” said Steve Miskin, spokesman for House Republican Leadership. “If it wasn’t earmarked, then there’s no way to ensure this is how the money is going to be spent.”
Miskin noted the code is not an extra pot of money, but accounts for sums already included in the annual state budget. He described it as a “direction sheet” that lays out where those funds are intended to go.
“These things have been in there for years and years and years,” he said. “These are programs that have large public support and have been funded for years.”
“I never have suggested that some of the projects aren’t worthwhile, the question is the vetting and on what process they were made,” said Dr. G. Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll and Professor of Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College. “The fact is they don’t go through the normal legislative vetting process.”
Madonna said the language necessitated by the state constitution makes the process of figuring out where the money is going a slog that most people are not going to get through – or, if they do, won’t know why it’s in there to begin with.
“It’s a way to discuss it in terms that, by the time you get through that list, you smile and say, ‘What are they really doing here?’” he said. “It doesn’t name the facility either. You have some difficulty identifying what specific House or Senate district it’s in.”
“It definitely violates the spirit of the prohibition in the constitution and just as a matter of policy, too, it’s
“The person who doesn’t follow this stuff day to day is going to be hard pressed to figure out what that actually means. There’s a lack of transparency regarding this process.” _ Commonwealth Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Bob Dick.
much better to have more transparency than less, so if you actually read the fiscal code, you have to decipher what it says,” said Dick.
Dick suggested replacing the existing system with competitive grants that identify who is soliciting the funds and their intended purpose, or pegging the funds to specific line items in a budget tracking sheet.
“It’s possible you could make these more comprehensible,” he said.
But beyond that, Dick said there is still an issue of accountability and fiscal responsibility.
“It’s not necessarily the causes that we have an issue with,” he said. “Taking that language out, they’re still saying, ‘Ok, we’re going to decide how this money is going to be divvied up.’ It’s still a problem.”
“We would prefer being even more transparent, but are prohibited from doing so under the Constitution,” wrote Kocher in an email. “Let me also add, most of the descriptions are fairly easy to decipher. It is not a secret and easily known. We aren’t playing hide and seek with this.”
Kocher said anyone receiving funds must provide a public application for the money and the particulars of the allocations can easily be discovered through a right to know request.
“The General Assembly has a right to have priorities on the budget,” she said. “Earmarks are done to address needs in communities and many of them are located in areas represented by members who did not vote for the budget or even some of the other important bills.”
State Rep. Alex Charlton, R-165 of Springfield, was one of 40 co-sponsors on the fiscal code bill and said he has no qualms about using it to secure funds for the county.
“My job as the representative for the 165th (District) is to bring back every dime that I can for my constituents,” he said. “If I can secure money from the state through the fiscal code, of course I’m going to do that.”
Charlton said the system has been in place for decades and no one aside from the Commonwealth Foundation has ever had a problem with it. If anything, he said it is an issue of semantics, not obfuscation.
“It’s how that legislation is written, it’s not intended to be evasive or elusive,” he said. “Nobody puts them in there like this to ‘hide the money,’ it’s just that that’s how the language gets put into the fiscal code.”
“My job as the representative for the 165th (District) is to bring back every dime that I can for my constituents. If I can secure money from the state through the fiscal code, of course I’m going to do that.” — State Rep. Alex Charlton, R-165 of Springfield