HARRISBURG, Pa. -- 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, The Associated Press found.
The AP obtained never-before-released spending records through a request filed under Pennsylvania's newly revised Right-to-Know Law.
For at least the past 20 years, legislative leaders and the governor's office have annually agreed on a pool of money to be made available to legislators to fund pet projects. But the state budget does not specify the total amount of the grants or the identity of the lawmakers behind each grant proposal.
In Pennsylvania, 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.
The money enables lawmakers to take credit for bringing home checks to their hospitals, schools, local governments, civic and cultural organizations and more. The grants are similar to congressional earmarks.
From July through December 2008, Pennsylvania state legislators submitted requests for more than $110 million in grants to the governor.
Greene County, home to 40,000 residents and last year's Democratic House leader, is slated to receive $3 million from that pool of grant money, ranking the county No. 1 in grant dollars per person, the AP found.
Carbon County, home of the current Democratic House speaker, is on pace to receive the second highest per-capita award.
Top legislators said the grants are distributed fairly.
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 disproportionally large grants. Similar patterns were not as evident in the grants requested by the Senate GOP majority.
Some states have sought to make the funding of lawmakers' pet projects more transparent. In New York, $170 million in legislative grants that heavily favored the districts of majority party members are now disclosed with the name of the sponsoring lawmaker attached, thanks to public pressure and scandals.
New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine froze a state legislative grant program altogether when it became clear that the money disproportionately benefited majority leaders' districts.
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