Out in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania lawmakers are scrambling to climb on the bandwagon.
“This is outrageous,” they say. “We shouldn’t be allowed to accept cash gifts from lobbyists or others. There oughta be a law.”
Yes, there oughta be a law. In fact, there should have been strong ethics reform that included a ban on these types of cash gifts decades ago. It speaks volumes that it took a recent scandal — involving Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane squashing a sting operation in which four Philadelphia state legislators took money from an informant posing as a lobbyist — for any kind of organized outrage from our elected officials to surface.
Republican and Democratic leaders from the House State Government Committee announced last week they would be drafting legislation banning cash gifts to lawmakers from lobbyists, the principals they represent and others. Similar promises came from senators on both sides of the aisle last week, as well.
It’s mind-boggling that it’s legal for a Pennsylvania lawmaker to accept cash gifts from lobbyists as long as he or she reports individual gifts of more than $250 and total gifts of more than $650 in a given year, and as long as he or she does not allow the gift to influence any decision-making. Actually, it’s legal for legislators and the governor to accept gifts, dinners, trips, event tickets or just about anything else if there are no strings attached.
It’s even more mind-boggling that such gift giving is allowed given the number of corruption scandals that have rocked Harrisburg over the years.
Ethics laws for Pennsylvania lawmakers and others in power are pathetically weak. The power brokers in Harrisburg should spare us the moral indignation and fix what is so terribly broken.
Banning cash gifts won’t solve all of the corruption problems in Harrisburg and it won’t stop some lawmakers from allowing themselves to be bought and sold. But it’s a start.
Climbing on the bandwagon isn’t enough. Anything short of the toughest ethics laws in the land is unacceptable.
— The (Easton) Express-Times
