ALL RIGHT, from now on, the description of the Pennsylvania Legislature in any encyclopedia should read: "the place where things have been so screwed up for so long that they seem normal."
This occurred to me as I listened to state Attorney General Tom Corbett announce his corruption case against state Rep. John Perzel and seven others.
Corbett says they used up to $10 million in tax dollars to develop sophisticated computer systems for chosen Republicans to use in election campaigns.
But it wasn't the criminal charges against Perzel and company that got me. It was the supposedly legitimate state computer contracts Perzel allegedly used as cover for his political software project.
Corbett explained that there were bona fide state contracts for companies to develop software "for constituent services that would be available to all House Republican members and their staffs."
Whoa, I'm thinking. Back up there a second.
You're saying we use state tax dollars for a contract to help legislators provide constituent services, an important government function, but the tools are only available to Republican members? And that's OK?
Yup. That's the way it's done in Harrisburg.
I did some checking.
Of the $276 million in the Legislature's budget, roughly two-thirds is allocated along party lines.
There's $57 million in the state Senate budget for "Caucus Operations (R) and (D)." In the state House, we find $10 million each allotted to Republican and Democratic "Special Leadership Accounts," and $19 million each for "Legislative Management Committees."
As I see it, a legislative caucus is a voluntary association of members who agree to act in concert, and it makes sense that individual members' staffs will spend time communicating with others in the caucus.
But using tax dollars to establish separate Republican and Democratic staffs for policy, research, information technology staffs and putting control of members' district office budgets in the hands of party leaders is something else.
When you ask Harrisburg veterans about partisan budgeting, they say two things: It's always been done this way, and both parties do it, so it's fair.
Folks, public dollars are there to serve the public. If we whack them up into slush funds that party leaders can use to compete with each other, we invite exactly the kind of mischief alleged by grand juries in the Bonusgate probes.
So far, 12 Democrats and eight Republicans face charges.
