Pa. lawmakers hid nearly $3.5 million on lavish dinners, sports tickets and other expenses
A stone’s throw from the Salzburg Cathedral in the Austrian city stands the St. Peter Stiftskulinarium restaurant, a 1,200-year-old icon partially carved into a rock face. Inside, the chefs serve up pumpkin dumplings with wild broccoli, venison with king oyster mushroom and beef tartare with fig and summer truffle.
The restaurant touts itself as the oldest in Europe and is said to have been visited by Christopher Columbus and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. On a warm, late September day in 2016, the chefs served another dignitary of sorts: Joe Scarnati, the most powerful lawmaker in the Pennsylvania Senate.
Scarnati was 43 days from re-election and 4,300 miles from his constituents in his rural district along Pennsylvania’s northern tier. But records show the $246 bill was charged to his campaign credit card. So were other stops on his European trip, including in Germany, where he dropped $1,295 on lodging, and in Belgium, where he spent $152 at an Italian restaurant near Bruges’ historic city center.
Under Pennsylvania election law, campaign accounts must be used for “influencing the outcome of an election.” But what qualifies is largely open to interpretation. For Scarnati, a Jefferson County Republican with enormous influence over how tax dollars are spent, it’s the kind of dining on someone else’s dime that might have given voters pause — had they known about it.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2019/10/pa-state-lawmakers-are-hiding-millions-in-campaign-spending-and-its-all-legal.html
It's both sides doing this.
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