Editorial: Bonusgate

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, May, 2008

House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese (D., Greene) has pledged to divert "substantial" tax money from his Harrisburg slush fund to more beneficial uses. Sounds good, but not if DeWeese has in mind spending taxpayers' money on a Washington consultant to do damage control in a grand jury probe of staff bonuses.

The General Assembly's bill to taxpayers for responding to the Bonusgate scandal has now topped $1 million, it was reported yesterday. It's not hard to envision the day when DeWeese and his pals will have spent more taxpayer dollars to clean up this ethical mess than the $3.6 million in tax money that legislative leaders spent on the secret bonuses. House Democrats handed out $1.9 million in bonuses to 717 staffers in 2006, which was more than half of the total spent by...