ACORN Got $200,000 from PA Taxpayers

Given all the recent scandals surrounding ACORN, the vote to defund them in the US Senate, and the Census severing ties with ACORN, it raises an interesting question – how much money is Pennsylvania state government giving to ACORN?

It isn’t an easy question to answer, given the lack of transparency in the Pennsylvania state budget. However, we can give a preliminary partial answer, using DCED’s Investment Tracker: ACORN got at least $205,000 in state grants since Nov. 2007. We used that date, since (HT Steve Miskin), the Pennsylvania Department of State gave ACORN a cease and desist notice at that time.

While the Investment Tracker contains only a portion of DCED’s spending, much less the rest of the state departments and agencies, it should noted that most of those grants came from line items we identified as WAMs. Of course, WAMS have been under just as much scrutiny as ACORN lately, given other scandals, and it remains to be seen if their will be WAMs in the new state budget or not.

See table below or click here for Pennsylvania’s ACORN funding.

Update: Grants were all made before Nov. 2007 – I entered a start date in the search criteria, but no end date, which apparently ignores dates entirely.