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Corruption is Everywhere
If the Justice Department is right, Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent J. Fumo may be one of the most crooked politicians in America. In a criminal indictment filed last February, Fumo was charged with spending more than $2 million of taxpayers' money on a lifestyle fit more for a king than a state legislator. According to the 272-page federal indictment, Fumo had state employees clean his house, do home renovations, and even drive his car to and from Martha's Vineyard every summer while the senator flew on a private plane. One staffer reported having to wrap and mail 150 Vincent J. Fumo bobblehead dolls. (Fumo, who is retiring, has denied the charges and will go on trial in September.)
The senator, says the indictment, summed up his philosophy this way: A person is best advised to spend "other people's money." He was known to use the slang shorthand for it: OPM.
OPM is, of course, your money. Plenty of attention has been focused on scandals in Washington, D.C., that have landed lobbyists like Jack Abramoff and Congressmen like Randy "Duke" Cunningham behind bars. But in state capitols across the land, sleaze and thievery are running rampant. Legislatures dole out more than $1 trillion a year on everything from highways to child care. Yet state lawmakers operate under much less scrutiny than members of the U.S. Congress.
Close your eyes, point to a map of the United States, and you can find state sleaze. Take the "Tennessee Waltz" case. In 2005 four members of the legislature in Nashville were arrested for taking bribes from FBI agents pretending to seek favors. The worst offender, State Senator John Ford, was sentenced to 66 months in prison. One videotape showed Ford stuffing $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills into his pockets.
In New Jersey, federal authorities charged a former legislator with securing $10 million in state funding for a local hospital in return for a $66,000-a-year phantom consulting job with the hospital.
It's alarming how many of these crooks are major power brokers. One of Maryland's top legislators, State Senator Thomas L. Bromwell, Sr., pleaded guilty last July to helping a construction firm win a state contract in exchange for $200,000 in payments to his wife for a no-show job and $85,000 worth of free home renovations. In a wiretapped conversation, Bromwell said, "I'm a Democrat, but I'm a capitalist, okay?" This summer, he will start a seven-year stretch in a federal prison.
Ben Stevens was once the president of the Alaska state senate. Last year, a prominent businessman pleaded guilty to bribery charges, admitting that his company had paid nearly $250,000 in "consulting" fees to Stevens to buy political favors. (Stevens has not been charged.)
No one knows how much corruption costs state and local taxpayers, but these cases serve as a reminder: Although it's easy to bash federal politicians, the elected officials sent to Washington come from somewhere, and if we want good government, cleaning up statehouses is a good start.
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