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Do us a favor: Stay home!
By Howie Carr

Boston Herald Columnist
Monday, June 4, 2007 - Updated: 12:08 AM EST

Wouldn’t it be cheaper if we paid the Legislature not to come to work?

There are so many things wrong with the idea of per diems. For starters, how about with the fact that you are basically bribing them to show up? Talk about the wrong incentive. They wouldn’t have become solons if they weren’t inclined toward stealing.

Am I right, Chris Asselin, formerly of the general court, now inmate 90812-038 at Schuylkill Federal Correctional Institute.

By the way, per diems operate on the “honor system.” Legislators are taken at their word that they are actually due their traveling allowance for commuting to the State House. I ask you, does that seem wise, sanctioning a practice that requires the use of the phrases “honor system” and “state reps” in the same sentence?

How addictive is it to get paid to drive to work? Yesterday I am perusing the printout of sticky-fingered solons and up pops the name of Susan Pope. Talk about forgotten but not gone. She’s the Wayland Republican who last year retired due to ill health - the voters got sick of her. Since then she has futilely tried to jack up her pension on the grounds that her parking space should have been counted as part of her income.

Anyway, Pope was a lame-duck rep for one day this year, but she still managed to put in for her final 18 bucks. One for the road, you might say.

This per-diem issue is a perennial embarrassment at the State House, kind of like House speakers being convicted of felonies. Years ago, when the stipend for the Boston reps was a mere $5 (now it’s doubled to a sawbuck), a rep from East Boston was caught red-handed. He’d filed for a fin on a day when he was in Rome.

The reporter for this newspaper called the statesman and told him he was busted. There was a silence on the other end and then the solon spoke: “For five bucks, you’re gonna croak me?”

Per diems are the crack cocaine of legislative perks. The hacks are addicted almost instantaneously. Consider the case of Sarah Peake. A year ago she was just another moonbat selectman from Provincetown, best known for demanding that a famous old painting at P-town Town Hall of the Mayflower Compact be removed. See, Sarah objected to the fact that no women were casting ballots in the Max Bohm oil painting. Hey, Sarah, it was 1620, remember?

Peake was elected state rep last November. And it wasn’t long before somebody gave her the great news: P-town is so far away that they give you $74 a day just for showing up!

Sarah Peake has already collected $3,922 this year. She’s gone from moonbat to greedy moonbat.

How about Rep. Marie St. Fleur, the Haitian-born state rep from Dorchester who is one of the biggest tax deadbeats in the Legislature? Marie considers paying taxes strictly optional, but by God she keeps bellying up at the treasurer’s window. Even though she gets only $10 a day, she’s already pocketed $530 this year.

After an almost yearly string of low-grade per-diem scandals, the treasurer now says his staff keeps tabs on the process. My suggestion is that for each day a rep files for the expense of traveling to Boston, he should be required to produce a photo of himself, holding up that day’s newspaper, the way kidnappers force their victims to do to prove that they’re still alive. Pose them one after another in front of, what else, the Hooker statue. You want the ransom, reps, prove it!

There’s another, more up-to-date way to keep tabs on the solons, of course. Ankle bracelets.

We already pay them way too much money for far too little in return. This is why they keep getting themselves arrested - idle hands are the devil’s workshop. My God, Paul Kujawski has already collected $2,592 this year, at $36 a day. He must have almost gone bankrupt when he lost his license for OUI.

What a racket. Being a rep sure beats working for a living, and if you don’t believe me, just ask Tommy Taxes.