Pennsylvania and the Turnpike big lobbyists on Capitol Hill

The Washington Post's In The Loop column by Jeffrey Birnbaum has a table showing the Commonwealth (state) of Pennsylvania as the champion lobbyist in Washington among state and local entities. It is #1, spending $505k in the first half of 2007 on lobbying the federal government.

Equal #2 is Puerto Rico and Miami Dade County both $320k.

But #4 is the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission at $280k.

 The Brimmeier domain is ahead of the state of Texas ($180k) and Los Angeles County ($264k) in lobbying on Capitol Hill.

Lobbyists like Vince '139 counts' Fumo don't come cheap.

Of course the Turnpike Commission can justify its expensive lobbying on Capitol Hill by the need to counter the lobbying of the the Rendell administration.

We got a helpful phone call about this but it wouldn't be helpful to the career of our helper to thank them by name.

The table in question doesn't appear to be in the Washington Post online, but we shelled out 35c to buy a paper for you from a street box so we could scan the table from the print edition where it's on page A17.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-10-23