House of Representatives' Calendar

December 6th, 2004

Representative Robert L. Freeman sent me a copy of the 2005 PA House of Representatives' Calendar as a kind of a holiday greeting. It is a lovely calendar indeed.

 

Bob Freeman is one of our best representatives. I have worked with him on the Saucon Partnership where Bob has been instrumental in helping Lower Saucon and Hellertown decide whether creating a regional plan for both jurisdictions would be a good thing to do. I think it is because it could be followed by a regional zoning planning which would save the taxpayers a large fortune in reduced school taxes and, not incidentally, slow development and preserve green space in Lower Saucon without harming Hellertown at all.

 

I presume Bob, in common with his fellow representatives, send this calendar to his friends and as many constituents as he has been in contact with. That must be quite a few. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I wish our representatives wouldn't do that.

 

It is not that I have anything against friendly gestures, nor, Lord knows, do I mean to imply any criticism of Bob. If other representatives send these calendars, then Bob would be a political fool not to do so. Rather, I keep thinking of the cost of these calendars, handsomely produced as they are, to the taxpayers. There are 203 representatives. A guess would be that each representative sends out about one thousand calendars. An edition of more than 200,000 plus postage must add up to a pretty penny. My senator hasn't sent me a calendar, but maybe the senate publishes an equally expensive one on its own.

 

The Pennsylvania budget for 2004-05 is almost 23 billion dollars. It may therefor seem like small potatoes to carp about the expense of the House Holiday Calendar. Yet recently the school board spent over an hour debating whether to hire Pennsylvania Finance Management to run the numbers on what effect Act 72 would have in our community. The issue then was whether to spend $3,500 on one survey which, in my opinion, would do the trick, or opt for a $25,000 option which would have provided the board with unlimited advice. The difference, $21,500, may also seem like small potatoes in a school district budget of almost $30 million. (In the end, the board voted five to four for the $3,500 option.)

 

The trouble with small potatoes is twofold. First, even small potatoes in sufficient numbers amount to heavy bags that really do drain money away from other useful projects. In the state's case, monies wasted on calendars could easily be spent on some worthwhile school project, especially because the legislators, by Act 72, have sought to persuade the public that school directors are the devils who raise taxes on real property holders while shirking their responsibility to properly support the schools. Spending the calendar money on a school project won't, certainly, solve the problem, but it is a start.

 

Second, waste is waste and indicates a lack of discipline, not to mention fuzzy thinking. The chief example of this kind of waste is actually pictured in the Calendar. All those lovely state buildings, built to exhibit pomp and power, are darn expensive. When a school district seeks to build a new school, if it is to get any state aid for the project it must comply with PlanCom, a legislative scheme which seeks to insure that schools do not waste money building Taj Mahals. Unfortunately, the legislature does not apply this standard to itself: witness all those buildings in Harrisburg .

 

Another example is the so-called “walking around money”(WAMs) that each senator and representative may spend in his or her district without further consultation. Granted this totals a mere $150 million in this year's state budget, yet I wouldn't say it was “mere” if it was in my pocket or for that matter, my school district's. No doubt state legislators do a lot of good in their own communities with this money, but it is no secret that the primary reason for allowing legislators to have this largess is to enable them to get reelected. Obviously, the local legislator who insures that the local park has a nice fountain will be fondly remembered at election time while his opponent has no such advantage.

 

And speaking of fuzzy thinking, does anybody in the legislature actually think those calendars are useful? Off hand, I'd bet my tax bill that less than one in every fifty calendars received is actually pressed into service. After all, most garages prefer playboy pinups. And, alas, the trees that died for this inanity. And the trash collecting fees. . .

 

Okay, so I am off the deep end. The moral of this piece is, let he (or she) in the legislature who is without sin in spending unnecessarily cast the first stone at school directors.

 

And, Bob, I still love you. I hope the affection continues to be returned.