General Assembly Spending Far Outpaces Inflation

March 4th, 2007
By Mike Wereschagin
Pittsburg Tribune-Review

When state Rep. Thomas Caltagirone showed up for his first day at the office, he found out he didn't have one.

"Everybody shared a secretary. It was almost like an open forum," said Caltagirone, D-Reading, who joined the General Assembly in 1977. "Senior members and chairmen had offices, but most of us didn't."

What a difference three decades makes.

Today, it costs taxpayers $1.3 million a year to feed, clothe and house each lawmaker and his or her staff. When Caltagirone started, it cost $175,000 a legislator. That increase is more than twice the rate of inflation.

Lawmakers began increasing their budgets as a way to professionalize the Legislature and respond better to constituents. Critics, however, say it has gone beyond building a better government. Along with phones and offices for each legislator, the increases have paid for nearly free health care for lawmakers, $650-a-month car leases and accounts with tens of millions of dollars controlled by party leaders.

This year, the General Assembly budgeted $335.5 million for itself. Had lawmakers adjusted only for inflation since 1977, their budget would be $148 million, according to a Tribune-Review analysis of 30 years' worth of the Legislature's budgets.

"It's not surprising to me that they increased that much, but I certainly think they'd have a tough time justifying it," said Nate Benefield, director of policy research for the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative think tank.

"I don't know if they're any more productive than they were 30 years ago. I don't think their constituents think they're doing a better job today than they were 30 years ago."

Voter anger in November sparked a movement to reform the Legislature, when furious voters tossed out the top Republican senators and handed the House of Representatives to Democrats.

State Sen. Jeff Piccola, R-Dauphin County, hosted a hearing Feb. 22 at Duquesne University to discuss whether Pennsylvania should rewrite its constitution and possibly shrink the Legislature's size. More hearings are planned. The House will consider a series of reform measures recommended by the Speaker's Commission on Legislative Reform.

Reform-minded legislators are trying to answer whether a transformation of the Legislature begun more than 30 years ago has gone too far. During that time, the 253-member General Assembly grew from a part-time body into the nation's largest full-time state Legislature. The number of staff members more than doubled to about 3,000, an office annex was added to the Capitol, and legislators got perks including unvouchered payments of $148 per day.

Now, the average household pays $66.34 a year to keep the General Assembly running. If the Legislature only increased spending after 1977 based on inflation, the per-household cost would be $30.60 annually, according to state budgets and the federal Consumer Price Index.

Proponents say the changes modernized the Legislature and allowed representatives and senators to connect with constituents. Computers replaced typewriters, and since lawmakers don't have to share secretaries any more, staff members can be devoted to just one legislative district, instead of four or five.

"Several years ago, the decision was made to professionalize the staff of the Legislature. It also brought the Legislature into the modern world," said Tom Andrews, spokesman for House Majority Leader H. William DeWeese, D-Waynesburg.

Andrews pointed out that $335.5 million is less than 2 percent of the state's $26 billion budget.

"The workload has increased tremendously," Caltagirone said. "Even on the (House) floor, we have laptops now. You can pull up anything you want at any time. That saves time, and time is money."

Caltagirone and others say the growth in the last few years is more about serving Democratic and Republican caucus leaders than serving constituents.

The top leaders in those caucuses -- 11 people in each chamber -- control more than $200 million of the General Assembly's budget. Increases in those leadership-controlled accounts helped make the budget grow faster in the past 10 years than at any time since 1977. The Legislature's budget increased by $110 million above inflation since 1997. Of that $110 million, $66.5 million was in leadership-controlled accounts.

"You're looking at a lot of money. We never get to see how that's being spent or what it's being spent on," Caltagirone said. "It's like the biggest secret in the state."

The accounts pay for everything from representatives' and senators' staffs to airing television commercials to catering caucus meetings -- though DeWeese said recently he'd stop using tax dollars to cater his caucus' lunches. The accounts also paid for employee bonuses of as much as $28,137 for some individuals. The attorney general is investigating the bonuses to see if they were tied to work done on lawmakers' campaigns.

"We've gone from guys sharing a locker to a select group of emperors," said Mark Schwartz, chief of staff to the late Rep. K. Leroy Irvis, D-Hill District, who served as House Speaker from 1983 to 1989. Irvis began hiring more people in the mid-1980s so each legislator could have a staff member, but Schwartz argues leaders in the last 10 years have taken that expansion too far.

"There's something in between," he said.

Lawmakers passed important and complicated legislation before their spending began outpacing inflation in 1984-85, Schwartz said. Civil rights laws, formation of the community college system and creation of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, among other accomplishments, passed in the 1960s and '70s, Schwartz said.

Changing technology made some of the increases necessary, said Tim Potts, a former legislative aide and founder of the government watchdog group DemocracyRisingPA.

"They're providing a lot more constituent services than they used to," Potts said. Lawmakers now have money to advertise programs such as home heating aid and property tax breaks.

"Some people call it incumbent protection plans" because lawmakers' names are often part of the ads, he said. "Some of it is just legitimate. How do you connect with constituents today? They like to see things on TV and in newspapers, or hear about it on the radio."

Adapting to changing technology doesn't account for all the growth, though, Potts said. "I don't see any justification for the huge increase."

Potts and a few others led the charge to repeal the controversial pay raises legislators granted themselves in July 2005. After voters tossed out 17 lawmakers who voted for the raise, many legislative leaders, including the new Senate president pro tempore, have talked about the need to change how the Legislature pays for itself.

"Spending is just out of control in all levels of government," said Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati, R-Jefferson County. Scarnati pledged to make financial audits of the Senate more thorough and give the public easier access to them. He and other Senate leaders are reviewing past audits to get a handle on the chamber's spending.

"I think the needs of today (include) greater transparency," Scarnati said. "The public is demanding it."

The House also is considering reform measures, and representatives are seeking public comment on what's needed, said Andrews, DeWeese's spokesman.

Potts and Schwartz praised the overtures and said they like the reform-minded talk of Scarnati and new House Speaker Dennis O-Brien, R-Philadelphia.

"This is necessary, whether they do it as a matter of political survival or because of an understanding that this has got to change," Potts said.

"These guys have a huge job to do, and they're starting to do it," Schwartz said. "I have some confidence in this speaker, that he's beginning to grapple with these issues."