Corbett signs off on funding Arlen Specter library

HARRISBURG - During his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, Tom Corbett made the funding of an Arlen Specter library in Philadelphia the punch line of a campaign ad about wasteful government spending.

Think of that funding, Corbett said in the television ad, "next time you hear we have to raise taxes because there's nothing left to cut."

Now, the joke may be on him.

This week, Gov. Corbett signed off on a $1.9 million state grant for the library that will house Specter's papers and memorabilia - along with an office for the former Pennsylvania senator.

Corbett's spokesman said the governor had no choice on this or about 700 other grants approved during the final year of Gov. Ed Rendell's administration.

"There were legal obligations," said Corbett spokesman Kevin Harley. Corbett "reviewed it very carefully, and lawyers made the determinations that the recipients had fulfilled the requirements of the contract made under the previous administration."

The 2010 decision to award Philadelphia University the grant prompted outcry from government critics, who saw it as a prime example of political pork.

Rendell at the time defended the project, named for his longtime friend and mentor - along with a grant for the John P. Murtha Center for Public Policy at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown, named for a late Democratic congressman who knew a thing or two about pork - saying both projects and others on his list were important economic-development generators.

The Specter library grant, one of two the university received from the state in 2010, is to be used to renovate the historic Roxboro House on the campus in East Falls, a neighborhood that has been home to both Rendell and Specter.

The nonpartisan center will educate and inform policymakers, citizens, scholars, and students through classes, lectures, research, and outreach programs, the school said.

"Philadelphia University is pleased to be the steward of Sen. Specter's historically significant archival materials," school president Stephen Spinelli Jr. said in a statement Thursday. "The center will further scholarship and understanding of some of the most important historical events of our time for generations to come."

Formerly known as Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, the university has 3,500 students in more than 50 undergraduate and graduate programs.