Attytood (sometimes, rarely) gets results
A year and a half after Attytood reported on Corbett's gift-mongering, Wolf imposes a ban.
In 2013, I put together all the puzzle pieces of the various freebies -- from yacht trips to private jet travel to sold-out sporting events -- that Gov. Corbett had accepted from lobbyists and business executives seeking something from state government. Some of the credit for that piece belongs to the website StateImpact PA -- which first uncovered the 2011 Rhode Island yacht vacation with a fracking executive and caused me to look deeper at all the Corbetts' gifts. But after the piece ran on the front page of the Daily News, a number of newspapers around the state called for a gift ban.
And then...nothing happened. Which makes sense politically -- why would Corbett impose guidelines in the second half of his term that he'd so wantonly violated in the first half? Last week, though, the governor ran on his record, and he lost.
Like Sam Cooke said, it's been a long time, but a change is gonna come:
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Gov.-elect Tom Wolf is restricting members of his transition team from accepting gifts of any kind, a ban that he soon plans to extend throughout the executive branch of state government.
A gift ban was included in an ethical conduct code that the Democrat said Tuesday he is requiring transition employees to sign. As governor, he plans to issue an executive order making it policy for executive-branch employees, a spokesman said.
"It's what Tom refers to as the 'just say no thank you' rule," said Wolf spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan.
State law allows gifts of any value to public officials, including lawmakers, and requires disclosure only when the annual value reaches $250 for gifts or $650 for "free" travel, meals and lodging.
All I can say to this simple "no thank you" code is..."thank you." But it's just the first step on a thousand-mile journey. Pennsylvania still has some of the weakest ethics laws of any state in the union, and, not surprisingly, some of the weakest ethics State lawmakers, some of whom were caught on tape accepting envelopes of cash or other "gifts" in that so-called "botched sting," need to pass a gift ban of their own. Since the legislature's new right-wing leadership has vowed to do the exact opposite of anything that Wolf does or wants to do, I won't hold my breath.