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Sweet music for tone-deaf legislators

2 min read

Musicians regularly oil their instruments’ valves to reduce friction and ease play – much as private interests regularly oil some state politicians for roughly the same reason.

Even Pennsylvanians who don’t know the difference between brass and woodwinds are wise to invest, through the state government, in world-class cultural institutions like the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, to which the state government has contributed about $10 million in grants over the past five years.

It undoubtedly is discordant for taxpayers to hear, however, as reported by Spotlight PA, that this summer the orchestra spent $30,000 to squire two state-government politicians around Europe.

Soon-to-retire Republican state Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman of Centre County and Republican state Rep. Rob Mercuri of Allegheny County, and their wives, accompanied the orchestra on its summer tour of Germany, Slovenia and Austria. In Austria, the orchestra closed the prestigious Salzburg Festival, an extremely tough ticket for other than free-riding state lawmakers. The symphony also picked up the politicians’ airfare, lodging and meals.

This is a product of the Senate’s refusal to enact a ban on “gifts” to lawmakers.

The Legislature has no scheduled voting days. So a gift-ban bill about which many politicians had made a great deal of noise is dead – yet again. Legislators who recognize the necessity of such a ban will have to introduce a new bill in the next session.

Unlike almost all other states, Pennsylvania has scant restrictions on “gifts” for legislators. They may accept “gifts,” transportation, lodging, meals and other perks from private interests, as long as they report it on financial disclosure forms to the state Ethics Commission. Those forms are not released publicly until the following calendar year, rather than in real time.

There is a separate lobbyist disclosure law, under which lobbyists reported spending

$1.6 million on lawmakers in 2021. But that pathetically weak law does not require detailed breakdowns of the spending.

Lawmakers should, but won’t, enact a gift ban and reform the lobbying law. So expect more globe-trotting by low-brow politicians, courtesy of “gifts” from high-brow institutions partially funded by taxpayers.

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