Pennsylvania taxpayers pay more than $15 million a year to maintain, service, insure and fuel 3,650 vehicles used full time by state employees, according to The Harrisburg Patriot-News.
Some employees are also allowed to use their state cars for personal use, including the governor's press spokesman because lord knows if there's an emergency, the governor's mouthpiece has to use his taxpayer-paid car to get somewhere.
Barry Kauffman, the executive director of the public watchdog group Common Cause Pennsylvania, told The Associated Press that the number of state-owned vehicles was excessive.
"It seems there needs to be an effort afoot to totally re-evaluate the policy on state cars," Kauffman told the AP. "It's just beyond my ability to understand why we need to have 3,650 employees with permanently assigned cars."
Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner has been asked to do an audit of the use of state cars.
"It appears ... there are people who may have the use of a state vehicle for what is essentially a short commute to their place of employment in Harrisburg and are permitted to use the vehicle for their personal use," Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati and Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi said in a letter to Wagner. "That's what we're trying to determine."
Read more about Pennsylvania's bloated state government in this AP report from today's edition of The Mercury.
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