John Morganelli: AG Corbett Buying Campaign Air Time With Taxpayer Dollars

John Morganelli, a no-nonsense District Attorney and Democratic nominee for Attorney General, wants to know who is policing incumbent Tom Corbett. Morganelli charges that Corbett is using taxpayer money, intended for gun control, to promote his candidacy. Here's how John describes this situation:

Attorney General Tom Corbett has spent and misused hundreds of thousands of tax dollars, and maybe even a million, for political style radio advertisements in Philadelphia and SE Pennsylvania. Mr. Corbett’s blatant and unaccounted use of public money to raise his name recognition in an election year is the same kind of misuse of public money for political purposes that Mr. Corbett is investigating in the so-called "Bonus- Gate Investigation." In fact, Mr. Corbett is spending more tax dollars than was doled out in the alleged use of tax dollars to reward political work. The larger question here is "who polices the Attorney General."

Here are the facts. Approximately a year ago, thanks to the effort of Senator Vince Fumo, the legislature allocated 10 million dollars to address illegal gun trafficking in Philadelphia and SE Pennsylvania. The money was entrusted to the Office of Attorney General to establish and deploy a Gun Task Force aimed at illegal gun trafficking. Unfortunately, Mr. Corbett decided that he would divert hundreds of thousands of dollars, and maybe even a million dollars, to create and air radio ads that do nothing about illegal guns. These are nothing but political advertisements disguised as “public service announcements” saturating the airwaves of SE Pennsylvania in an election year solely designed to raise Mr. Corbett’s name identification. Mr. Corbett has decided, like those under investigation in "Bonusgate" that our tax dollars, rather than his campaign funds, can be used for his re-election campaign. Although DA Lynne Abraham appears on some of the ads, DA Abraham is not on the ballot and has no control over the content of the ads or how any of the money is spent. Even the legislature that allocated the funds has no control over how the money is spent. With no accountability, Mr. Corbett continues every day for the last year to saturate the airwaves with tax–payer funded political style ads that do not take one illegal gun off the streets. Every dollar that is spent on raising Mr. Corbett’s personal profile is one dollar less that is used to pay investigators to crack down on illegal guns.

Today, I am calling upon Mr. Corbett to stop campaigning with tax-payer dollars. At the very least, Mr. Corbett should agree that it is improper for him to use tax dollars in this fashion in an election year. Any public service announcement that is needed for this program can be done solely by DA Lynne Abraham who is not a candidate this year.

I am also asking him to give the public a full accounting about how much money was spent on creating the ads, and placing them on the many radio stations. The public has a right to know how tax-payer money is being used and Mr. Corbett is the only person who knows exactly how much public money has been misused to date.