It seems state Sen. Bob Robbins isn’t too happy about the media’s interest in legislative travel and how it is funded.
Robbins complained, first to a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer and then to The Herald, that media pressure is keeping lawmakers from “networking” with their peers at conferences and conventions.
Robbins was contacted for a story that ran in Friday’s Inquirer about state Rep. James Roebuck’s ill-advised — and aborted — plan to bill Pennsylvania taxpayers for a trip to a state government conference on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas.
Robbins was the only other Pennsylvania lawmaker to attend the conference but unlike the Philadelphia Democrat, Robbins said he decided before going that he wouldn’t bill the state.
Asked why, the Salem Township Republican was candid.
“Because of calls like this,” Robbins told the Inquirer’s reporter.
“It is unfortunate that our members are not networking like before,” the newspaper quoted Robbins as saying. “And it’s all because of the media pressure and the stories that beat us up.”
“If you want to find out what’s going on and get different ideas, networking is extremely important for all professions,” Robbins told The Herald on Monday.
Robbins paid from his own pocket to avoid public and media backlash for going to the conference in the Virgin Islands, ostensibly to “see off” the longtime conference director and to discuss solutions to common problems with lawmakers from other states. Robbins said he was looking for input on a plan to make it easier for military children to transfer to new schools.
That’s a noble cause, but with everything states are doing to encourage tourism and conventions here in the good old U.S. of A., it’s odd that state lawmakers find it necessary to have their own gatherings in an offshore tropical paradise. Why couldn’t it be held in, say, Philadelphia?
What’s that you say? It was held there a few years ago? And not one Pennsylvania legislator attended, not even Sen. Networking “because he didn’t have a specific reason to attend.”
So a gathering of officials from the eastern U.S. and Canada isn’t worth attending when it’s within commuting distance of Harrisburg, but when it’s anywhere else — like, say, the Virgin Islands — valuable networking doesn’t happen because nosey reporters from outfits like the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Herald ask too many questions and criticize lawmakers for using taxpayer money to attend.
R-i-i-i-ght.
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