It got kind of heated for a few testifiers this year.
Revenue?
A week after Attorney General Kathleen Kane rejected the
Corbett administration’s rapid, secretive and unconstitutional plan to turn
over the state’s thriving Lottery to British firm, Camelot LLC, Revenue
Secretary Dan Meuser made his appearance before the House panel. He found
himself battered with questions about the lottery plan. Namely, how much the
high price consultants the Administration hired need to be paid.
See, even while the Corbett administration decides its next
step (and the clock is quickly ticking toward the March 16 deadline), and even
if the plan goes up in smoke, Corbett’s handpicked high price consultants still
need to be paid -- like MILLIONS and MILLIONS of (taxpayer) dollars.
And before you say, well, come on, how much are we talking?
Isn’t “millions and millions” kind of broad? Well that’s all the Administration
has been able to report to Pennsylvanians.
When Meuser headed to a Senate hearing a week later – he still
didn’t know how much cash we’re talking.
He knew it would be “substantial,” but less than $30 million. See where
my broad generalization of MILLIONS and MILLIONs comes from?
In my opinion, and probably in a lot of people’s opinions,
these multimillion dollar payments to Chicago’s Greenhill & Co. and
Baltimore’s Piper LLP are a big deal, and the Administration should dedicate
the necessary time to calculating them.
What I find so ironic about the Corbett administration’s
inability to figure all of this out, is that on many occasions Gov. Corbett has
compared Pennsylvania to the average family (albeit one that will cut to the
bone and refuse to consider Jr. picking up a part time job after school) evoking
images of a family around the dinner table looking at their finances.
But what family purchases a good or service without knowing
the price? Is this the way Pennsylvania families budget? Hire a firm hundreds
of miles away and worry about paying the bill later.
Please, if Gov. Corbett is going insist on using his tired
analogy comparing Pennsylvania to the typical American family, he ought to at
least provide his revenue chief with a calculator.
