Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

KentuckYSnow t1_j68h8hw wrote

Reply to comment by ReturnOfCE in Pa. Gov. Josh Shapiro loosens his predecessor’s notoriously strict gift ban for top officials by CobBasey

That's fine if he was reducing it to that, but he's increasing it from something more strict and we'd all be better off if they could accept nothing at all.

19

UnaffiliatedOpinion t1_j68vyao wrote

> Shapiro clarified that... that commonwealth employees should feel comfortable “getting a cup of coffee” with their constituents.

Zero-tolerance policies don't work anywhere else*, so why would we expect them to work here? If the policy is really so strict that accepting a $1 bottle of water is against the rules, I would certainly bet that many employees were looking the other way. That leads to a culture where "everyone is doing it" and nothing gets reported because everyone has broken the rule at one point or another. I would expect it to be more effective to carve out reasonable limits with strict reporting requirements. That way, we have some visibility into who's buying Harrisburg's lunches, while having a line in the sand where people might actually be willing to blow the whistle if they see someone go over the limit or not reporting.

  • (yes, I edited out the part of Shapiro's quote where he says 'zero tolerance', because clearly there is up to $36 worth of tolerance)
14

TheMayorMikeJackson t1_j69a4w9 wrote

Actually people weren’t doing it. We couldn’t have coffee or doughnuts in early morning large meetings if penndot was attending cause of these rules

5

KentuckYSnow t1_j6bgfrc wrote

By nothing I mean someone shouldn't pay for your entire meal directly, if you're at aeeting and they just have coffee and donuts or what we that's for everyone and you just take a serving that's different than someone buying you dinner. And offering someone a water isn't buying in influence, it's just being courteous. Just saying that they shouldn't purchase for a state employee anything specifically, but common sense would say that if there's something so immaterial as a donut or a bottle of water that they can take it, but if someone wants to buy an entire meal, the state employee can pay for it themselves.

−1