AP: Pa. legislators tapped grants while deficit grew

Another glaring example of Harrisburg insiders fiddling while Pennsylvania burns.

From an investigative piece by Marc Levy of The Associated Press:

Even as the state government staggered under a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall that crimped public services and forced layoffs, the Legislature continued to tap a hush-hush pool of grant money set aside for lawmakers' pet projects back home.

All told, legislators have requested about $210 million since the money was approved in July 2008, according to an Associated Press analysis of documents released by the governor's office under a Right-to-Know request. That works out to $830,000 in taxpayer money for each of the state's 253 legislative districts, where the grants are spent on everything from playground equipment to police cruisers, and festivals to ball fields.

The grants — nicknamed WAMs, for "walking-around money" — enable lawmakers to take credit for bringing home the bacon and give a handful of top lawmakers outsized influence over directing disproportionate sums of money to their own districts.

Between October and April, as tax collections stubbornly lagged projections by about $1 billion, legislators' grant requests increased by about $30 million.

The just-signed $28 billion budget for 2010-11 appears to set aside tens of millions of dollars more for the grants. Following a three-month budget stalemate and a multibillion-dollar deficit last year, top legislators say they decided against inserting more money for the grants into the 2009-10 budget that passed in October.

Gov. Ed Rendell has not stopped approving the grant requests.

"We must and should keep this commitment," Rendell's chief of staff Steve Crawford said two weeks ago. "It's a matter of trust and honor. If the Legislature wanted to use the money to reduce the deficit, that's something we would be more than willing to discuss."

Read the full story here.

Originally posted at TONY PHYRILLAS