PAY TO PLAY: PA VERSION?

A Captain Renault post: Lots of news of course over the last week about the Governor of Illinois and the fine political art of pay to play. I came across an article in Legal Newsline that sheds some light on what some observers describe as PA's very own pay-to-play game. Read it here.

PA Governor's (and other state officials) have long had the ability to award lucrative contracts and legal work to preferred firms without the need to bid the work out. These no-bid contracts have very often been awarded to generous campaign contributors and have been PA's version of pay-to-play for a long time.

Below is an excerpt from the court action. In polite, but strong, legal language it sure looks like an accusation of pay-to-play to me.

"Indeed, the role of the Governor's General Counsel in the retention of Bailey Perrin, the timing and amounts of Mr. Bailey's campaign contributions the terms of the contingent fee agreement, and the involvement of Bailey Perrin in other Risperdal-related litigation that might be affected by this lawsuit combined to give rise to a manifest appearance of impropriety -- the impression that the government's prosecutorial decisions have already been infected by impermissible considerations."

By the way, our research has shown that Attorney General and Space Cadet Tom Corbett has often used outside law firms to do work that many believe should be done in-house. We are doing some additional research to determine how many of those firms are also big campaign contributors to Corbett. Given Corbett's always high level of hypocrisy, we expect to find quite a few contributors who just so happened to get lots of legal work. We will report our findings here of course.