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The new Governer is hard at work tackling the tough issues I see.

> Shapiro’s version allows employees to accept food or refreshments when “representing the Commonwealth in an official capacity” worth as much or less than the federal government’s per diem rate. Those rates already serve as the basis for other state public service compensation levels — for instance, they’re the model for state House and Senate members’ per diem rates.

> The exact numbers vary by meal and location, ranging from as low as $13 to as high as $36.

Can't wait for idiots to misconstrue this as quasi-legalization of bribery/corruption

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.

Huge bribes of historic proportions! Probably should have elected Doug Mastriano instead so he could wear his civil war uniform for the wrong side of the Mason Dixon line . Oh wait it’s $36.

Anytime the leadership of an organization changes one of the first things done is a review of policies.

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Was this when Wolf was governor, or before?

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This was posted either here or on r/pennsylvania last week, and it was clear most commenters hadn't read the article

I work in natural gas and can confirm. I have seen multiple people leave the industry and go straight to government jobs.

SMH, few must be keeping track or there must be a lot of leeway with "gift ban" then.

I thought the corruption pipeline was "supposed" to go the other way - leaving a high-profile regulator's position to immediately lobby for the industry you used to regulate. Is the stint in the government job seen as a workaround to obtain a promotion, or something?

I honestly don’t think so. Working in oil/gas can be pretty brutal and I think a lot of guys just do it to get an easier job with government benefits but it definitely plays into the system.

I myself have looked into government work and some of the job openings will take “industry related” experience in lieu of a degree and then the higher up you go the dirtier it all gets.

> 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)

Looks entirely reasonable. Food, refreshments limited to federal per diem, certificates and awards. Pretty common sense. Still bans cash, tickets, etc.

Wow most don’t see the correlation. Good for you.

I knew someone who used to say if they think a sandwich is going to sway me, they must not think very much of me.

And yet pharmaceutical reps were able to lay the groundwork for much of the opioid crisis with nothing more than free food and stationary. Never underestimate how easily many people can be influenced.

That’s always been my understanding as well. In the dimock frack documentary you can even see a guy make an appearance as a state worker and then later at the end as an industry worker

It goes both ways. But in my experience it’s usually government employees going into the industry because it pays so much better.

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Extremely

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

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Well, it was a bit more than that—it was also the promise that oxycontin wasn't addictive and was very safe, and suppression of any information that suggested otherwise. I think be a lot of the doctors probably truly believed it was a miracle pain cure initially, and the free food was just the foot in the door to get the doctors to listen.

Note that the new and old policy does not cover the legislate branch, so your state rep can still be wined and dined.

Unfortunately, the governor doesn't have the power to do that on his own, and they almost assuredly will not vote for it themselves.

Not to sound cynical, but it works in both directions now. Has for awhile. People dip in and out of politics and sometimes journalism and then go back into their industry.

PA state employees can now accept a free lunch. THE HORROR

Tbf they were definitely fishing for rage clicks over the article title

I have a friend who works in an industry that I permit for now that I work for the state.

She's been absolutely terrified of us having lunch together when she comes by cause "what if someone accuses you of taking a bribe?!?!"

I'll have to send this to her with a "Can we please go get pho now?"

When I was a tax auditor for the state, I had to turn down coffee/bottled water countless times. I wasn't going to risk my job for a $2 bottle of Deer Park water but I wasn't going to decrease a deficiency for one either.

This is a common sense change.

Good take

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.

If that's all you see then your vision is pretty narrow.

Why?

Nothing more?

"Another 2017 study in jama, however, suggests that even small gifts can cause doctors to change their script-writing behavior. It looked at what happened to the market share of brand-name drugs sold by reps at 19 academic medical centers from 2006 to 2012. Each institution in the study banned small gifts and regulated pharma reps’ visits more strictly at some point during this time; the first enacted its prohibitions in October 2006, the last in May 2011. This staggered timeline allowed the researchers to examine how the rate of prescriptions for the repped drugs changed when the policies went into effect. They found that these drugs lost 1.67 percent in market share to cheap generics and drugs without a dedicated sales force. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, think of it as a percentage of $60 billion, the 2010 sales revenue for the drugs covered by the study. It works out to a pretty handsome payback for some turkey sandwiches." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/did-free-pens-cause-the-opioid-crisis/576394/

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that people can’t be swayed by gifts, but there’s a big difference between what’s described in this article and what I’m talking about ie a Panera boxed lunch that retails for $10. The article talks about taking people to fancy restaurants and giving them thanksgiving roasts. Those aren’t even remotely on par with a sandwich.

I didn’t even bring up pharma sales that was the other guy, the original article is talking about government employees needing to pay cash for a bottle of water, and not being able to accept it for free. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with government employees accepting small freebies, if it’s part of the normal course of business. Like an inspector is on site on a hot day and one of the workers offers him a bottle of water, that should be fine, it’s just common sense. I don’t think he’s gonna go from a fail to a pass because of that.

The per-diem is up to $75 depending on your area, which can buy a pretty nice lunch. Pharma studies are just some of the studies we have that show a real-world scenario. Politics would be harder to study, as bills are harder to quantify than prescriptions. This study on sales (for instance, and note this isn't my field so I don't know anything about this journal) shows that a gift worth about $7.70 has a large effect, depending on timing: "We find that small gifts matter. On average, sales representatives generate more than twice as much revenue when they distribute a small gift at the onset of their negotiations. However, we also find that small gifts tend to be counterproductive when purchasing and sales agents meet for the first time, suggesting that the nature of the business relationship crucially affects the profitability of gifts."

This review article in the Journal of Bioethics comments that "[t]he presumption is that large gifts, such as extravagant vacations, have the capacity to influence behavior, but gifts of de minimis monetary value, such as donuts and penlights, do not. Yet, while it might seem both logical and practicable to distinguish small gifts from larger, seemingly more problematic gifts, a large body of evidence from the social sciences shows that behavior can be influenced by gifts of negligible value."

Overall, there are many studies showing that small gifts influence behavior, especially in certain contexts. I wouldn't be so sure that a turkey sandwich wouldn't influence my behavior. I am not aware of many of my own biases, and most people are not.