Lawmaker's limo (white) lie-- (What else has Perzel lied to us about?)

Lawmaker's limo (white) lie

By Debra Erdley and David M. Brown

TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Thursday, October 13, 2005

State House Speaker John Perzel dodged reporters' questions about lawmakers' controversial pay raise Wednesday, but he couldn't duck a hardball from a fourth-grader.

So -- in playground parlance -- he fibbed.

The child wanted to know if the powerful lawmaker traveled in a limo to get to Beechwood Elementary School in Beechview.

"I came in a car," Perzel told the boy, while his driver waited outside in a black Lincoln Town Car with limousine plates. An aide said "Friends of John Perzel" paid for the car and driver.

Reporters later barraged the Philadelphia Republican with questions about the 16 to 54 percent pay raise the General Assembly approved for itself in July. Republican and Democratic leaders in the Legislature engineered the raise.

Perzel -- who has vowed he won't consider bills to repeal or alter the pay raise unless 102 members of the House request that -- visited the school with state Rep. Michael Diven, R-Brookline, to deliver two cases of books to the school and read to Kelli Graham's fourth-grade class.

He settled onto a bale of hay in a classroom and pulled out his reading glasses. Behind him were decorations the students made -- paper cutouts of piggy banks and dollar bills.

The pay raise triggered a massive petition drive, a rally at the Capitol, and three lawsuits. But Perzel said it's a non-issue.

"We're here today for the book drop. The legislative pay raise was decided July 7," Perzel insisted. "That was the end of it."

Perzel's salary increased from $108,724 to $145,553 with the raise. He told reporters that legislators previously were underpaid, and said voters unhappy with the decision have a right to vote against incumbents in 2006.

"They can absolutely count on me to vote against every bloody one of them," said Sam Dimoff, 65, of Plum, a retired railroad company employee.

"If they had integrity they would have brought it to the public before they snuck it through," Dimoff said. "If they thought they were doing the right thing, why did they sneak around about it? It's that simple."

"It's not a dead issue for many of us in the Legislature and for many at the grassroots level," state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, one of several lawmakers seeking to repeal the pay raise, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Metcalfe, R-Cranberry, said he intends to continue to push for a vote on the issue.

Dogged by reporters after he toured the school, Perzel defended the raise repeatedly. He said legislators -- who get annual cost-of-living raises -- had not received a raise in a decade.

He offered no response when asked whether the state can afford the Legislature's pricey salary-and-benefits package, when some children at Beechwood Elementary attend classes in a "temporary" annex that the board had hoped to close years ago. Perzel said he planned to meet later with Pittsburgh Public Schools officials to talk about what the state can do to help the school district.

And then he left -- climbing into a Jeep, as an aide waved away the black Lincoln.

Debra Erdley and David M. Brown can be reached at derdley@tribweb.com or 412-320-7996.

Source: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/regional/s_383735.html

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