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PA House Dems Paid Themselves Before State Workers
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| Contributor | Scott³ |
| Last Edited | Scott³ Aug 05, 2009 01:01pm |
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| Category | News |
| Author | John L. Micek |
| News Date | Wednesday, August 5, 2009 06:55:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | "Moments After ... yesterday's vote on the Frankenbudget, House Democrats issued a triumphant press release proclaiming that they'd "[led] the charge to pay state workers," who've been going without pay or living on partial pay since July 1.
But before they cast that epochal vote, Democrats made sure their own members, who also have not been paid since June 1, got their paychecks as well. The House Comptroller's Office confirmed this morning that it cut checks for Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday. State workers will not be paid until next week at the earliest.
At a press conference yesterday, Gov. Ed said the state Treasury would start running the numbers to calculate the current and back pay due to 77,000 state employees. Those paychecks would start going out early next week, Rendell told Capitol scribes.
Brett Marcy, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Todd Eachus, D-Luzerne, confirmed the payments.
Asked why Democratic leaders had undertaken the decision to pay lawmakers first, Marcy responded:
"We have always had the ability to pay our Members throughout this budget impasse, but our leadership team made the decision early on that we would not pay our Members until we passed a bill that would allow state workers to get paid. We passed that bridge bill yesterday, and the Governor just signed it today."
Marcy said it was "regrettable" that state employees were caught in the budgetary crossfire.
"We believe they should be paid as quickly as possible, and that's why we passed the bridge budget yesterday. We have no control over the administrative process of getting those workers paid, but we understand the Governor has tried to accelerate that process as much as possible."
Though lawmakers have not been paid, legislative staffers have drawn salaries funded through surplus accounts, spokespeople for all four caucuses confirmed this afternoon.
This extraordinary move outraged Republicans, who have also been going without pay since June 1.
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