Expenses
Legislative expenses are taxpayer dollars, and the public has a right to know how that money is being spent. That’s why I don’t take a per diem or drive a state vehicle.
A searchable spreadsheet listing my office’s expenses can be found here.
This spreadsheet is updated monthly and contains all of the expenses that I have the authority to authorize. The spreadsheet reflects expenses as they are incurred, not necessarily as they are paid through the legislature’s LFS payment system.
My office incurs other expenses that I am unable to fully account for through this process because they come from other accounts that I do not have access to. To address this and increase transparency with your taxpayer dollars, I have introduced legislation every session that would require the Offices of the Chief Clerk of both the Pennsylvania House and Senate to post all expenses of all legislators on a public facing website in a searchable format. Per diems, state vehicle usage, and reimbursements for expenses would be included on the website. The legislation will also require that all office, travel, and other expenses that come out of both legislators’ and caucus’ operating accounts be included on the website.
Following my introduction of this legislation, the Senate began posting these expenses on their website in July 2021. You can view monthly breakdowns of my office expenses here, as well as breakdowns of other senate offices. Unfortunately, these PDFs are not searchable, making it difficult to find and compare data. That’s why I created and made the searchable spreadsheet of my expenses available to the public.
I think it’s important that you are able to see records of all of my office’s records, not just ones that the Senate makes public. Below, you will find links to PDFs of my expenses going back to when I took office in December 2018.