PA Headlines 8/9/21
HARRISBURG – Spotlight PA is reporting… Theft charges against a Philadelphia-area Democrat highlight Pennsylvania’s lax rules for reimbursing lawmakers with taxpayer and donor money, two state-run systems with little transparency and even less oversight. Former State Rep. Margo Davidson was charged in July with stealing from taxpayers and misusing campaign funds, helping her pad a legislative salary that’s already among the most generous in the country. She has since accepted responsibility and resigned her office. Despite warnings from good-government advocates and even some inside the Capitol that the state’s reimbursement systems are ripe for abuse, Republican leadership has failed to move reforms.
Unlike most private- and public-sector employers, state lawmakers often aren’t required to provide any proof when seeking reimbursement from taxpayer-funded accounts. On the campaign side, the public can’t see thousands of dollars of election expenses lumped together under vague categories and charged to credit cards. Those expense rules, highlighted in a series of stories by The Caucus and Spotlight PA over the last two years, have created “a culture of zero accountability,” Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, said during a recent Spotlight PA live event.
They were written by the very lawmakers they are meant to govern, but too often, Ali said, there is a practice of “professed change,” where lawmakers talk about reform when confronted with problems but don’t follow through. What little documentation the legislature does require from its members and staff doesn’t do much good for the body’s internal gatekeepers. The criminal complaint against Davidson stated that personnel from the House comptroller’s office have “no ability to check whether an expense was actually paid for by the representative or some other entity.”
State Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, said he intends to give the systems a hard look. Grove, who chairs the House State Government Committee, said in late July that he will call a series of hearings to review rules and procedures for how legislators file expenses, as well as state ethics laws and other laws that govern when elected officials must forfeit their pensions. Rep. Paul Schemel, R-Franklin, who will head one of the subcommittees as part of the review, said in an interview that the charges against Davidson were “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” “We’ve got a system that is open to people committing wrongful acts,” he said.
