Your Tax Dollars At Work

In exciting news about lawmakers you don’t know about, Democratic Bucks Co. State Rep. Chris King will return a $5,000 bonus.

Why should you care about this? Oh, there’s no reason for that. But it’s kind of funny, since King was able to unseat Rep. Matt Wright partially by hammering him with the pay raise all election. (Wright didn’t do himself any favors by writing a guest column defending the raise.)

King got the bonus for last year because of good work he’s done (or something). It was much higher than his 2005 bonus, though:

King received a $565 bonus in 2005, far less than that of last year. He said he had changed positions from a policy committee analyst, where he worked with a staff of seven, to a three-person staff under LaGrotta, where he handled both tourism committee business and constituent services. The bonus wasn’t for working longer hours, he said.

“My job responsibilities had increased a tremendous amount,” King said. “We accrue comp time if there are longer hours. I was doing more work in terms of dealing directly with constituents and working on particular bills.”

One bill he researched dealt with a violence rating system for video games, he said.

ESRB.org. Now somebody give me five thousand bucks.

King sending bonus back [Bucks County Courier Times]

Suing Your Way To An Election Win

State Rep. Matt Wright came up with a good way to get his opponent in next week’s election to stop running attack ads.

He threatened to sue.

Yes, that’s right. Wright, a Republican, saw an ad for opponent Chris King that featured footage of Wright on the floor of the state house, so he went and whined to John Perzel who got a Williamsport lawyer to threaten a lawsuit if the ad wasn’t removed. (That’s Wright in the photo from his official state senate page, which includes this complete personal history: “Married to Donna[.]“)

Footage from the floor of the state house, you see, is copyrighted by, uh, the state house. And so using footage for political campaigns is against the rules. We wouldn’t want our constituents learning what actually goes on there! (The state senate has similar rules, naturally.)

Perzel spokesman Al Bowman said the purpose of the restriction is to “protect the integrity of the proceeding[.]“

Ha! Let that one sink in. King, of course, will stop running the ads on Bucks County cable television. All hail the mighty lawsuit!

Attorney: King’s TV ad violates copyright law [Bucks County Courier Times]
Matt Wright [PA House]