Reformers expect boost from 'bonusgate'

HARRISBURG -- Three years after the Pennsylvania legislature's pay-raise fiasco left scores of lawmakers jobless, reformers marked the infamous anniversary by talking about Pennsylvania's potential next great scandal -- "bonusgate."

Bonusgate is an investigation of elected officials giving taxpayer-funded bonuses to state workers in exchange for political work. Attorney General Tom Corbett, a Republican, says all four caucuses are being investigated, although House Democrats have emerged as the principal subject.

Reformers are hoping when the charges are announced, which most expect imminently, it will complete the reform started in the wake of the pay-raise.

That reform in Pennsylvania requires scandals is "perverse," said Tim Potts, founder of Democracy Rising PA. But he'll take it.

"We're very lucky to have two major scandals of this kind so close," he said.

Said activist Gene Stilp, "The one thing to blow the lid off this building," he said, looking up at the Capitol dome from inside its rotunda, "is bonusgate."

The two reformers are divided whether any charges leveled against lawmakers will have an impact in the 2008 elections.

Potts said he thinks the announcement's late timing -- ballots have mostly already been decided -- and the presence of the presidential election makes 2008 a difficult year to cause tumult for incumbent state lawmakers.

But 2010 is another story, he said. The likely ongoing nature of the bonusgate trial will keep talk of scandal in the news, he said.

"It will be much easier to focus on the legislature then," Potts said.

Stilp has a different take. News of the announcement will force lawmakers to tell constituents how they plan to change Harrisburg as they try for re-election this fall, he said, and might even make them take up an expanded fall agenda.