“Pennsylvania House leaders are steering a disproportionate share of grant money to their districts through a long-secret system of funding state lawmakers’ pet projects… this form of pork-barrel spending has been known as walking-around money, or WAMs. After the amount of money is set, legislative leaders submit their requests to the governor’s office, which then distributes them to state agencies to fund them…
“On the Republican side, House GOP grant requests helped put the home county of the minority leader in line for more money than most counties with similar populations.
“In the Senate, the home counties of two high-ranking Democrats were also in line for disproportionately large grants. Similar patterns were not as evident in the grants requested by the Senate GOP majority.”
WATCHDOG: Retired State Senate leader Gibson Armstrong extracted every cent imaginable (and then some!) for the Convention Center Project, although he apparently swindled the Lancaster Public Library out of a promised $2.5 million at the last minute to help cover CC deficits. Now Lancaster will receive less than its fair share for a couple of decades.
