Burying Bill Adolph, Not Praising Him
By Rocco Polidoro
The political career of retiring State Representative William F. Adolph,165th District is a clear case of why Pennsylvania needs a State Constitutional amendment to install term limits and to lower the number of legislators.
The 165th state house district covers parts of Morton, Springfield, Marple and Radnor. I hear Bill Adolph is a good guy in Delaware County but many people don’t know about the Bill Adolph in Harrisburg.
The Pennsylvania General Assembly has 203 members and the PA Senate has 50 members. Government watchdog groups have labeled PA as the fifth most corrupt state in the Country.
House members start off making $85,339 a year with excellent benefits. When Adolph started in 1989, he was earning about $35,000. Employee benefit specialists estimate that a great benefit package, like what state legislators make, is equal to about an extra 35 percent of their salary. Bill Adolph ended his 28 years with a salary of $120,000.
Employee benefit specialist would also say that the schedule of a state legislator is considered part time. The average full time worker works about 250 days a year whereas state lawmakers work about 125 days a year. In addition many lawmakers have other jobs or businesses which confirms the fact that their state jobs are part time. Plus they get over $600 a month car allowance, $159 a day for expenses and a full medical package which includes Nursing Home protection. So when one adds up Bill Adolph’s salary, his benefits, car allowance, per diem expenses, office rent, staff salaries and their benefits, the State of Pennsylvania has spent over $4 million in the last 28 years.
And there is no way to add up all of the gifts, conference trips and sporting events that had come his way in those 28 years.
Now that Adolph retires in January, he will earn about $120,000 a year in a pension with full medical insurance. The complete retirement package alone can total another $3 million over the next 20 years. So the grand total for Bill Adolph could top around $7 million.
Why do we tax-payers allow all this for career politicians ? There wouldn’t be any pensions with full medical benefits if there were term limits in place. Wouldn’t a 10-year limit be enough?
Our Founding Fathers never planned for us to have public servants spend a life time as a legislator and pay them a pension and medical care for life.To make matters worse, there are 252 other state law-makers that have the potential to draw millions. Now what did we get for the $7 million that we will eventually spend for Bill Adolph?
If you were waiting for property tax relief, Adolph never brought that to PA. If you support public education, Adolph voted many times to cut funding to our public schools but did vote to give millions to Charter Schools. If you supported cutting waste in government, Adolph was a major distributor of WAM (Walking Around Money) money for years. WAM money was unappropriated and unaccounted state money for special projects in the districts of the powerful lawmakers.
Adolph has had a history of not being a good steward of our tax money. While he was on the Board of Directors and then the chairman of PHEAA, the State Auditor General did a report in 2007 which showed that PHEAA wasted $25 million over a 5 year period. PHEAA is the state agency that awards college grants and school loans to college students.
Another example of Adolph’s poor stewardship of our taxes was when he voted in 2001 to increase the pension formula of state lawmakers, judges and teachers by 50 percent. As a result the 501 school districts in PA owe over a billion dollars to the state pension system. And because of this pension-funding crisis, many school districts will be forced to eventually raise property taxes even more.
In 2005, Adolph voted to raise his salary by 34 percent on July 7th at 2 a.m. with no input from the press or the public. Adolph took the first month increase but when the word got out and the pressure mounted on all of the Legislators, Adolph returned the increase in the second month. To prevent another fiasco like the 2 a.m. vote, Adolph and the rest of his friends, voted to permanently build in a cost of living increase so their salaries can go up a little every year. This way most of the public won’t know of their annual increases.
Adolph’s salary has gone up from $35,000 to $120,000. Can you vote yourself a 350-percent increase in your pay over a 28 year period ? You see my friends, we don’t need to be spending hundreds of millions on these politicians. And that is why we need to get behind groups that want to create term limits and lower the number of law makers. I
n PA there are 50 state senate districts. We are paying salaries and benefits for those 50 senators and their staff. Then within each of those 50 senate districts, there are four state house members like Bill Adolph. Why do we need four State House members in an area where we already have a state senator? It’s excessive representation and we over-pay dearly for it. If you think Adolph’s $7 million package is mind-blowing, try to calculate what we are spending through out the State for the hundreds of retired and active law-makers and their staff.
We have to impose term limits and decrease the number of law makers. It’s no wonder our state is now $1.7 Billion in the red. If we don’t change the State Constitution, you won’t be able to afford living in PA. Bill Adolph may be a nice guy but no politician is worth $7 Million.The hard working people of Pennsylvania need to wake up.
Mr. Polidoro is an outspoken Democrat from Springfield and has been long represented by Rep. Adolph.