Your taxes at work: Best not to think about it

NOT TO RILE anyone facing the duty of filing tax returns by next week's deadline (a/k/a that time of year one really looks at how much of one's money the government gets), but every time I turn around there's reason to be pissed off.

I'm not talking about ongoing aggravations such as the pay and perks of City Council, the state Legislature and Congress, members of which collectively do more to us than for us while spending our money.

(Digression: Can I get an eye-roll for President Obama "sacrificing" 5 percent of his $400,000 salary because of sequestration? And how about a hearty "HA!" for suggesting Congress follow suit? I mean, presidents open their wallets as often as Jack Benny did, and Congress is - you know it's true - a long-lost cause.)

I'm talking about the ongoing stream of alleged or actual misconduct supported by taxes and fees we pay.

From Philadelphia Traffic Court to the state Supreme Court, the hits keep coming, including from old obvious places designed to feed the political machine.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and the Delaware River Port Authority are being spanked for management mirroring Somali pirates - see it, like it, take it.

We're talking, in the case of the Turnpike, of priming political campaigns through bid-rigging, bribery and shakedowns costing the public "untold millions," according to charges announced last month by state Attorney General Kathleen Kane.

Let's see. We create a patronage bin to award huge highway contracts and expect, what? Best practices?

In the case of the port, the feds are looking at untold millions spent on politically connected projects unrelated to DRPA business, and doing so as if this is new.

Hmm. A New Jersey/Pennsylvania authority run by a board on which 14 of 16 members are political appointees. What could possibly go wrong?

Maybe it's time the bell tolls for these toll-taking bodies.

I mean, questionable stuff never ends.

Last week, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported that the Turnpike Commission spent $700,000 on outside counsel to defend itself against whistle-blower cases related to the same activities detailed in criminal charges announced by Kane.

In other words, public money was put in play on both sides of alleged crimes.

This is clearly a place where ethics get an E-ZPass.

And I guess that makes sense.

We are a state with eight, count 'em eight, former legislative leaders in prison (Bill DeWeese, Brett Feese, Vince Fumo, Bob Mellow, Jane Orie, John Perzel, Steve Stetler and Mike Veon); a state that sent an attorney general to jail, impeached a Supreme Court justice and just saw another justice resign following a corruption conviction.

Craig Holman is a government-ethics expert with Public Citizen, a Washington-based nonpartisan group: "Pennsylvania has an extraordinary amount of election-related scandal, but also a strong effort to catch it . . . there seems to be more enforcement than anywhere else in recent years."

He notes that the overarching problem is the amount and nature of money in politics, a problem he sees getting worse.

"We have fallen off an ethical plateau," says Holman. Since Jan. 21, 2010, the day the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Citizens United case allowing corporations and unions to make unrestricted political contributions, "there's more money and more dark [undisclosed] money at the federal and state level . . . we're going to see many more scandals."

Ah, yes. Follow the money.

Of course our pols behaved badly long before Citizens United and, according to the Center for Public Integrity's 2012 "Corruption Risk Report Card," seem likely to continue on their chosen path.

Pennsylvania owns F's in key corruption-predicting categories: political financing, state budgeting, redistricting and judicial accountability.

So, nothing new here, move along. Just don't forget tax-filing day.

Blog: philly.com/BaerGrowls

Columns: philly.com/JohnBaer