On March 18, 2019, Pennsylvania lawmakers went to work, passed eight bills — none controversial or particularly groundbreaking — and clocked out after three and a half hours. 

That short workday cost taxpayers $133,219.23 — legislator pay, benefits, and staffing costs not included.

The money, tucked in an array of expense accounts with little transparency, is a sliver of the $203 million total the General Assembly spent from 2017 through 2020 just to feed, house, transport, and provide rental offices and other perks for lawmakers and their staffs, according to a database of nearly 400,000 transactions created by The Caucus and Spotlight PA during a year-long investigation.

THE CONTEXT: Roughly one in 10 of those dollars — $20 million in all over the four years — went into lawmakers' pockets in the form of reimbursements for meals, mileage subsidies, per diems, and other expenses.

That’s on top of salaries that are already among the highest of any legislature in the nation, dinners on the dime of lobbyists and industry groups, and access to campaign war chests.

Records documenting that spending legally belong to the people who ultimately foot the bill: the taxpayers. But citizens who want to see what lawmakers are buying with their money face an array of barriers, delays, and even pushback from lawyers hired by the General Assembly with yet more taxpayer money.

Over the next year, The Caucus and Spotlight PA will examine and make public specific areas of spending by the legislature as part of their ongoing efforts to follow the money and track taxpayer dollars.

FLIGHT 93: Families of the 40 passengers and crew killed on Flight 93 in Shanksville two decades ago have created an annual award for heroism to help keep the memory of 9/11 from fading further, the AP reports. Nominations for the award can be submitted here.

NO NEWS: IUP is offering a journalism major with no journalism classes, the school's student-run newspaper reports. "It doesn't bother me anymore that I'm losing my job," Dr. Michele Papakie, chairwoman of the school's nearly dissolved journalism and public relations department, told The Penn.

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A THOUSAND WORDS: Residents of Appalachia used disposable cameras and writing to document their pandemic experiences as caretakers, frontline workers, and more. The nonprofit media organization The GroundTruth Project compiled the dispatches and pictures into poignant snapshots.

BRIDGE CLUB: A 127-year-old bridge in Mount Carbon will be moved a few miles down Route 61 and rebuilt as a Coal Creek Commerce Center pedestrian connector. PennDOT official Ronald Young told WNEP that "bridge geeks" are gonna geek.