Spokesman Reeves argues that there's nothing hypocritical in Ridge's stand. "Look back to what he said during the campaign," Reeves says. "He said, 'We've got to take it out from the closet and get it out for everybody to see.' Before, with the WAM program, you no idea how much money was in the state budget for these projects. Now you can see exactly how much money is going into it."

But since 1996, CRP grants have amounted to more than $150 million in various project payoffs -- the merit selection process for all of them completely secret.

To make matters worse, Ridge has even spent state tax dollars to keep the CRP grant process secret. Last September, the Tribune-Review and WPXI-TV, both of western Pennsylvania, have sued the Ridge administration to open up the CRP grant-giving process to the light of day.

Reeves says it's all just a matter of timing. "It's the line between public scrutiny of an internal deliberative process and public scrutiny of every expenditure of money," he says. "In this state, public-interest law is focused on the moment of the expenditure of the money." One wonders how that argument would fly with Tim Reeves back when he was a reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Money's a big thing for Ridge, and not just in terms of giving it to compliant legislators. He raised more in preparation for his 1998 reelection campaign than anyone in state history -- $15 million, to his Democratic opponent's $500,000. Like Bush's presidential "Pioneers," Ridge formed a special "Governor's Club" of individuals who could raise $25,000 for him. He later former a similar group called his "Leadership Circle."

"Look at the kind of money he raises," says Lawless. "You think they do that because they like him? People don't put that money up for no reason at all."

Often, it seems as though their reasons are pretty clear:

  • Ridge supporter C. Alan Walker and his father Ray gave more than $90,000 to Ridge; they were the primary landowners in a $4.3 million sale of property to the state National Guard for an M-1 tank training center in December 1999. This sale went through, despite the fact that, according to the York Dispatch, a separate landowner with a cheaper offer received a letter from a National Guard colonel saying, "Of all the properties that we have looked at, this area offers the best training area for our soldiers and equipment." When asked about the unseemly appearance, Reeves told the Hazleton Standard-Speaker, "It's frustrating to me to have to defend allegations that have no evidence behind them."

  • Patricia K. Poprik, then treasurer of the state GOP, and her husband, gave Ridge more than $16,000 by 1995, when her bond firm, First American, was the only one out of five competing firms to get a portion of $50 million in housing bond work from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency. "It only looks that way to people that are looking at it that way," Poprik told the Philadelphia Daily News when asked the obvious question.

  • Six of the 10 individuals Ridge named in April 1995 to a judicial advisory panel that recommends nominees for Philadelphia-area judgeships had given Ridge's 1994 campaign more than $70,000, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. This illustrious panel -- which Ridge formed to replace a bipartisan commission three decades old -- included David Simon, senior V.P. for U.S. Healthcare, who donated $37,000. "The fact is that people who are accomplished in the professional world are often politically active," Reeves told the Inquirer.

  • A 1998 study by the Philadelphia Inquirer noted rampant manifestations of this convergence of "accomplished" professionals and "politically active" Ridge supporters. Ridge appointed approximately 300 contributors to state boards and commissions; almost half gave Ridge $1,000 or more. One hundred or so firms that gave Ridge $5,000 or more found themselves with $1.5 billion in state contracts. More than 90 percent of the law firms given $7.8 million in no-bid bond work by the Ridge administration were firms that had given cash to Ridge.

    Lawless, who liked McCain during the GOP primaries, says that he was incensed when he heard that McCain, during last Tuesday's much hyped summit with Bush, "indicated that Tom Ridge would make a good vice president. I would love to be able to talk to John McCain and say, 'Are you crazy?! Your biggest issue is campaign finance reform; this guy stands for everything you're against ! You're saying that's who you think would make a good vice president?!' It's hypocritical."

    Then there was his welfare program. In 1995, Ridge promised that the last-gasp safety nets would never be taken; but he cut them anyway. In a budget in which he proposed $60 million in corporate tax cuts, Ridge moved to remove 220,000 Pennsylvanians -- including 140,000 of the working poor -- from Medicaid unless they went to work. Despite Ridge's reputation for putting a smiley face on GOP policies, he was hammered for being draconian, a smooth Newt.

    Hospitals, social workers, church groups, the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and others protested Ridge's proposed cuts, but they went through regardless. A few years later, after then-Mayor Rendell took out an ad in The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News decrying further cuts as part of Ridge's welfare reform as resulting in "human and fiscal catastrophe" -- forcing families to become "penniless" and cities and localities to pick up the slack -- the normally spendthrift Ridge dipped into the till of the Department of Welfare's budget, spending $9,000 of state money to take out a counter-ad, calling Rendell's criticisms "alarmist and misleading."

    "The welfare reform he enacted wasn't innovative, like [Republican Gov.] Tommy Thompson has done in Wisconsin," Democrat Whip Veon says. "Tommy Thompson has done welfare reform the right way, and the harder way. By spending more money on welfare today" -- by helping welfare recipients with transportation, health care, and child care -- "in the long run, in my opinion, Wisconsin will have more of those welfare clients actually in real jobs. Here, welfare reform essentially consisted of reducing Medicaid rolls by cutting people off Medicaid."

    Reeves pooh-poohs "the horror stories of what we were told would happen to Pennsylvania men and women if this were passed. If that were true, we'd be hearing from them." Nonetheless, this year -- with money from the tobacco industry lawsuit settlement -- Ridge proposed re-enrolling around 110,000 Pennsylvania working poor onto Medicaid, though Reeves says the move was unrelated to his welfare reform.

    The recession of the early 1990s hit the state hard, Reeves points out, and Ridge's predecessor, then-Gov. Bob Casey, pushed forward "a $1 billion tax increase that profoundly exacerbated recession. So Tom Ridge ran with an economic agenda of tax cuts and spending restraint. For the past six years we've reduced the rate of spending, which is significant because every year we've also cut taxes. When we came into office, there was only $66 million in the 'rainy day' fund; now it's $1.1 billion. So we will be able to get through the next recession without a tax increase."

    Rendell says he'd like to see at least some of the money go toward funding some of the state's poorer school districts, around two dozen of which are suing the state due to inadequate funding. (Education Week just ranked Pennsylvania at the bottom of states with equitable funding among richer and poorer school districts.)

    While Ridge has cut state spending, townships and boroughs have been forced to pick up the slack. Property taxes have gone up in the richer areas; in the poorer ones, schools have gone without.

    "It's absolutely apparent to everyone that the state has not fulfilled its obligation to adequately fund education," Rendell says. "The under-funding gap is so significant! But the governor's response -- like all the Republicans -- is 'vouchers vouchers vouchers.'"

    Ridge has pushed for vouchers at least three times; each time it has failed. Last June -- the third time -- he pulled out all the stops and pushed for a voucher bill in a legislative negotiation that went on almost entirely behind closed doors -- and without an actual bill for the legislators to even look at.

    "It's a process this administration inherited," Ridge said to reporters.

    There are any number of solid arguments in favor of school vouchers, but Ridge didn't lean on the power of his ideas, or the goodwill he had built with anything other than the deal-making endemic to the Harrisburg swamp. It's a superficial reservoir of goodwill, and it failed.

    Last week, on the other hand, Ridge's education bill -- which would give the state control over failing school districts -- did pass.

    As with everything with Ridge, the record is pretty mixed. He's been tough on the poor, yet he's also worked to raise the level at which taxes kick in for low-income families. He's been lauded for supporting plenty of environmental initiatives, and yet according to a recent study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Pennsylvania ranks second worst in the nation in toxic dumping. Last year he made tens of thousands ineligible for a child-care subsidy, but after what Rendell calls a "ruckus," Ridge reversed himself and restored a number of individuals to the list.

    It seems clear that throughout his entire six years as governor the project Ridge has been most committed to -- and most successful in promoting -- is, well, Ridge. "What Ridge has accomplished most is sort of to have maintained himself," says Baer.

    More recently, amid Election-year-criticism that he hasn't done anything to help Pennsylvania's skyrocketing and onerous property taxes, he dreamed up a plan to mail a $100 check to each and every Keystone stater who pays the tax. The check is due to arrive in October -- two weeks or so before Election Day.

    If he pulls it off, it could be an impressive stunt. And it might be just the kind of walking-around money that could benefit not just him, but George W. Bush, too.

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