Going back to that famous Jeep, Tom Wolf has always proudly touted his refusal of taxpayer funds and that belief is carrying over into the transition.
The Governor-Elect’s spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan announced today that the entire transition process from November 5th to January 20th will be funded with private donations.
Additionally, the contributions will be capped at $50,000 and any donation over $500 will be disclosed on the transition committee’s website on January 15th and March 30th of next year.
“I do not want taxpayers to shoulder the cost of the Transition, and I believe transparency and openness are important in order to restore the public’s trust in their government,” said Governor-elect Tom Wolf.
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3 Responses
Wolf will be fine unless he lets the Harrisburg Insiders back into his Administration. Wolf ran on change. The people voted for it. Wolf’s mandate that none of his administration would take gifts of any kind is a good start. The Pennsylvania House and Senate should also join the no gift policy. That is where it gets problematic. No gift policy takes the lobbies and special interests out of State Government. I believe most State Senators and State Representatives and their staffs really like all the freebies. The insiders will not give up the perks without being pushed into doing so. Time for that push . Average Pennsylvanians should be more important to elected officials than the special interests.
Even Tom Corbett’s budget Secretary, Charles Zogby, has said a discussion of new revenue would be appropriate as a means of reducing the budget gap. The Corbett approach to cut, cut, cut was soundly rejected by the voters a few weeks ago.
I’m not advocating a spending free-for-all, nor is Tom Wolf. It is time though for targeted investment by the Commonwealth in education and infrastructure to put people back to work and raise PA’s ranking in job creation from 50th in the nation to the Top 10 once again.
Couple that with tax breaks for the middle class and working poor and we’ll see the State’s economy turn around.
I really wish Wolf would focus on cutting spending in state government. He seems to care about the budget gap and actually want to do something about it, but I’m afraid his allegiance to the environmentalist big donors is skewing his vision toward a singular focus on the gas tax instead of cutting spending