Colunnist: If PA. is so broke, why does it have $100 million to buy an office building?

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/01/nancy_eshelman_if_pennsylvania.html

column in the Harrisburg Patriot-News. In effect, the PA. state government bailed out Wells Fargo and a California investment company that owned the non-performing bonds that funded the building, and who now get paid off.

Excerpts of link:

“The bonds were in default since the authority stopped making payments in 2002, four years after purchasing the property.”

I thought Pennsylvania was broke. I keep reading about cuts in school funding. Districts are doing away with Latin and art courses, charging kids to play sports, begging teachers to forgo their raises. Colleges and universities aren’t getting the state support to which they had become accustomed. Agencies that help the homeless, the elderly and dozens of other needy folks are cutting corners because state funding has dwindled or dried up completely.

I could go on and on about wage freezes and unfilled jobs and programs that have all but disappeared, but you get the picture. Heck, you’re living it. So, I ask my math-deficient self, “Where did the state suddenly find $100 million to buy Forum Place?”