Revealing look at spending by Pa. lawmakers

Lost a bit amid the daily news coverage of the novel coronavirus, state shutdown debates, and reopen-Pa. protests is a look at spending by the Pennsylvania Legislature.

We know — and often decry — the fact that Pennsylvania taxpayers foot the bill for one of the nation’s most expensive lawmaking bodies with notoriously ineffective results.

Last week, the Associated Press published a look at that spending, highlighting some of the costs to taxpayers for signs, meals, office supplies and other “necessities” of maintaining offices and staff for the 253 members of the General Assembly.

That spending totals $360 million annually, up from $318 million a year ago, AP reported.

Mark Scolforo of the Associated Press wrote that reporters combed through more than 6,000 pages of spending line items from last year. The details they found included expenditures to “flavor office water, buy fancy furniture, have locks changed and reserve choice parking spots.”

The review showed that legislators go through a lot of money for food and drink, not only for their own and staff meals, but also for community events or for groups visiting the Capitol, “with costs that sometimes ran in the hundreds, even thousands of dollars,” the report stated.

The vendors used for some of these expense also create some reason to pause: Nearly 200 orders by the Senate of snacks and soda last year were from Breski Beverage, in the Harrisburg suburbs, which is owned by Rep. Tom Mehaffie, R-Dauphin. He said he began supplying the General Assembly before being elected to office in 2016. He said he took legal advice that he stop dealing with the House after being sworn in, but that sales to the Senate were permissible.

Besides food, lawmakers also like pictures and nameplates. “To decorate their own offices, lawmakers can order up government-paid custom framing, sometimes to display pictures of themselves. The AP review found about half the 203-member House ordered framing last year,” Scolforo wrote.

In one example, when AP reporters questioned a retired state representative about expenditures for framing, he admitted the amount seemed high. Former state Rep. Bill

Keller, a Philadelphia Democrat, offered to reimburse the state for the 2018 expense and sent a check for $2,200 to the House.

Legislators spend a lot of money on signs and nameplates, according to the report — $50,000 in 2018-19. The AP report singled out Rep. Steve Malagari, D-53rd Dist., for ordering a custom-made sign for his Lansdale office that cost $1,300.

The lion’s share of the Legislature’s costs is easily its $299 million in payroll and benefits, according to AP. There are about 300 district offices in the House and 97 leased district offices and 122 satellite district offices in the Senate and roughly 2,200 employees.

Phones, computers and high-end video equipment for the Legislature are another major cost, with page after page of invoices, and individual items sometimes running into the tens of thousands of dollars. Along with video gear, the Senate also paid an installment on a $6,750 music licensing fee for its video productions, AP reported.

One expense of note was paper shredding. “Those public shredding events, often advertised as free, cost taxpayers more than $44,000 in 2018-19, with lawmakers hiring vendors to do the work,” Scolforo wrote.

The spending documents included hundreds of invoices to pay the cost of maintaining notaries public in legislative offices, a convenience that can be helpful in performing constituent service. But when it comes to governing and addressing the tough issues of fair school funding, economic development, pension reform, transportation and taxes, there’s little progress.

The detailed spending report doesn’t have a smoking gun or “gotcha” revelation. But the costs of running such a massive operation, from office supplies to toilet paper, are not in keeping with the legislative benefits to Pennsylvania.

The fundamental questions of whether public service is for the individual problems with getting a driver’s license renewed or the larger question of how to pay for road repair is reflected in much of this spending analysis.

If Pennsylvania is to prosper, the priorities must be to improve the state’s economy, education and infrastructure.

Tackling those goals would be time and money well spent.