Surplus contempt: People suffer while the Legislature sits on millions

It is beyond outrageous. It is the height of political arrogance.

Due to a bad economy and its effect on the Pennsylvania budget, this is a year when state employees have been laid off, environmental oversight has been cut, museums have closed and libraries have trimmed operations.

It is a year when the state's Rainy Day Fund was drained, $909 million in new taxes were imposed and the Legislature is about to expand gambling just to balance a budget.

These are hard choices, none of them welcome, yet an audit last week showed that the General Assembly ended the fiscal year June 30 with a $201 million surplus. The utter gall.

That's public money that should have been used to help balance the 2009-10 budget. Instead, lawmakers spent $84 million of the reserve to maintain operations during a 101-day budget stalemate -- a leisurely deadlock that would not have occurred if all state accounts were locked in the treasury on July 1 and all state activities had ground to a halt.

But the General Assembly is accustomed to rolling over a $200 million kitty, year after year, in theory to maintain its autonomy as the legislative branch, but in practice to hoard and spend taxpayer dollars in a way that no other state agency can.

Rep. Matt Smith, a Mt. Lebanon Democrat, is right that the giant reserve fund is a bad idea, and you don't need a grand jury indictment to prove his point. "It is a classic illustration of the need for a clean break from the past leadership practices and out-of-touch policies of Harrisburg," he said.

The fact that the excess accounts persist under both Democratic and Republican leaders casts a pall on both their houses and should make voters suspicious of anyone running in 2010 who doesn't pledge to eliminate them.

Members of both parties like to wrap themselves in the mantle of reform, but until they stop sitting on the public's money they will not be worthy of the people's votes.