Gov. Tom Corbett signed off on a state grant this week for the Arlen Specter library that he singled out during his gubernatorial campaign as an example of wasteful spending after determining he lacked legal grounds to reverse the commitment, a spokesman said.
The approval of the nearly $2 million grant for the Arlen Specter Center for Political Science and International Relations at Philadelphia University was originally made in 2010 by Corbett's predecessor, Ed Rendell, and it comes as Corbett moves to scale back a $4 billion borrowing program.
The Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program matches financial commitments for civic development projects and was greatly expanded under Rendell as a revitalization engine. A spokesman for Corbett, Kevin Harley, said the Specter library grant is the last of the Rendell-pledged projects under the borrowing program.
“This was thoroughly reviewed for a very long time by administration lawyers to see if there was any reason why the project could not be approved,” Harley said.
Harley said it wasn't the kind of project Corbett wanted to fund, particularly in difficult fiscal times for the state government.
Rendell had defended the Specter library and other projects financed by the program as critical to revitalizing struggling communities and improving civic cornerstones, such as hospitals and universities.
Corbett has not committed to any new projects under the program since he became governor last year, Harley said, and he is now talking with lawmakers about shrinking the program's debt limit down to $1.5 billion.
Politics
The ceiling was $1.2 billion when Rendell became governor in 2003, and he gradually increased it, with approval from the Legislature, to $4.05 billion.
On Monday, Corbett's budget secretary Charles Zogby wrote to the president of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., a pass-through agency for the money, that the governor has approved the grant and an agreement “should be fully executed in the very near term.”
Specter, a Republican-turned Democrat who was a mentor to Rendell, was defeated in 2010 in a bid for a sixth U.S. Senate term.
Philadelphia University said the center will educate and inform policymakers, citizens, scholars and students through classes, public lectures, research and outreach programs.
The university has Specter's archive of manuscripts, memorabilia and other materials from his career in public office, which stretches back to the 1960s when he was Philadelphia's elected district attorney. Before that, he was an assistant district attorney who investigated the Teamsters union and served as a staff lawyer on the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“The Center will further scholarship and understanding of some of the most important historical events of our time for generations to come,” Philadelphia University President Stephen Spinelli Jr. said in a statement.
