Shapiro perks suggest ethical backsliding in Harrisburg
In his first month as Pennsylvania’s 48th governor, Josh Shapiro has been on a roll: Removing degree requirements for state jobs, pushing sorely needed licensing reform and calling on legislators to end capital punishment are just some of the prudent policy moves he has made.
Even so, a troubling trend has emerged early in Mr. Shapiro’s tenure: an ambiguous and cavalier approach to ethics on donations and perks. He has promised a new culture in Harrisburg, and that calls for clearer rules and penalties regarding private sector gifts to public officials.
Mr. Shapiro has enjoyed perks to, among other things, a Philadelphia 76ers game and the Super Bowl, that are ethically questionable. The basketball tickets were apparently a gift from a campaign donor; the Super Bowl trip appears to violate the governor’s own executive order on official gifts.
On Jan. 4, two weeks before his inauguration, Mr. Shapiro sat courtside at the Wells Fargo Center next to Darren Check, a Philadelphia attorney and generous donor to Mr. Shapiro’s campaigns. If the governor records the ticket, likely valued at several thousand dollars, as a gift received in his official capacity, he must report further details about it on an annual ethics filing. But if he records it as an in-kind contribution to his campaign — which his team has confirmed he will, calling the game a “political meeting” — he needs to report only its value and the name of the donor.
This system creates an incentive to record perks like travel and hospitality as campaign donations, rather than official gifts. The distinction between the two is vague and, in many cases, nonexistent: Conversations between officials and influential donors easily meander between state business and electoral politics. A simple way to fix this problem is to require the same level of detail in reporting inkind campaign donations as official gifts.
Mr. Shapiro attended the Super Bowl in Arizona on the dime of the Team Pennsylvania Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to selling the commonwealth as an attractive spot to do business. The group reports it has a dedicated fund for promoting the governor, no matter which party, as a cheerleader for investment.
The governor, however, had just signed an executive order banning executive branch officials from accepting gifts from anyone with “financial relations with the Commonwealth.” This broad net certainly includes Team Pennsylvania, which has received $17.2 million in state contracts since 2007, according to the investigative group SpotlightPA. Both the Shapiro administration and Team Pennsylvania have argued that the group should not be included in the gift ban, but have given no compelling reasons for why it should be exempted.
If Mr. Shapiro feels entitled to comped travel from Team Pennsylvania — a perk previous governors have received — he shouldn’t have signed such a broad executive order.
That order, however, has no enforcement measures or penalties. It’s toothless, enabling Mr. Shapiro to posture as tough on official graft, while benefitting from the gifts he has seemingly banned for everyone else. That’s not the new Harrisburg he has promised.
To tighten things up, Mr. Shapiro ought to write and sign a better executive order — maybe a little narrower and certainly with more teeth. Skirting his own guidelines sets a bad example for the state capital.