| Mike Veon used taxpayer funds to feed his friends after basketball games and continued to collect his per diem meal allowances according to testimony yesterday in the BonusGate trial. Several staffers have testified that the former House Democratic Whip hosted regular games and one of the responsibilities of his staffers (for whom taxpayers paid) was to organize these events. Dinners were provided at your expense and Veon and the other State Representatives continued to bill you for their hotel and meal per diems in addition to having you pay for these after repasts.
Veon also frequently slept in his office in spite of getting the per diem allowances. The entire point of per diems is to pay for hotel and meal expenses for legislators who live too far from Harrisburg to drive back and forth. Of course every legislator gets them regardless of their distance from the Capitol. Veon basically double dipped by also billing for meals after these basketball games. It was a nice slam dunk on your pocketbook.
Emails are now directly implicating Veon in the staff work on campaigns. In spite of all the destruction of evidence committed after the story broke emails survive where he directly responds. This is the first really direct evidence saying he knew what was happening. It isn't credible anyway that someone as hands on as Mike Veon was didn't know why he had such a large staff, why so many of them worked in an out of the way office on the sixth floor, or what they were doing. It's beyond the scope of any common sense to think he didn't know and approve of what all these staffers were doing.
Evidence also came in detailing how when staffers left "on leave" on the rare instances when they did they continued receiving their state benefits. So even when they did do the right thing and leave the state payroll to campaign you paid for their health, pension and other benefits. All they gave up were their salaries and the bonuses system reimbursed them for that from tax dollars.
Remember that even though this trial is about Democrats Republicans did the same things. This was and is the culture of entitlement and abuse of the public which has reigned in Harrisburg for decades. Even now the system remains irretrievably broken. Leadership continues to have an iron grip on their Members. They determine who gets what office, how much staff, how much money to run their offices, who gets campaign assistance and so on. Anyone who steps out of line gets hammered and is likely to lose their next election. The result is a corrupt system where reform is almost impossible. |
