records can be shared. With many vets receiving care at private practices and those outside the realm 
It's bloated and wasteful, generously salted with patronage hires and a publicly funded re-election system for incumbent state legislators.
Or it's an army of devoted public servants, both an underappreciated element in drafting and debating bills and the indispensible front-line troops that help taxpayers do battle with bureaucrats.
The truth about Pennsylvania's 3,000-strong legislative work force can probably be found somewhere in between, but there is little doubt the reputation of the General Assembly's staff has become tarnished in recent years.
Allegations of the misuse of legislative resources for political campaigns and other illegal purposes, which have brought criminal charges against a couple dozen current or former state lawmakers and their aides, have led to sworn testimony that many staffers spent significant periods of their work hours on elections or performing menial personal errands for their bosses.
There have already been 10 convictions, two acquittals and a mistrial, with additional trials set to begin later this year.
As part of a yearlong national project that examines budget problems facing governments across the country, the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors organization and the AP teamed up to take an in-depth look at the Legislature's work force.
By any measure, it is one of the largest in the nation. A 2009 study by the National Conference of State Legislatures ranked Pennsylvania's legislative branch second in total spending (behind California), second in per capita spending (Alaska), and second in spending as a percentage of general government operations (Nevada).
The NCSL said Pennsylvania employs about one of every 11 state legislative employees in the nation, with barely 4 percent of the country's population.
The Legislature's budget is often raised as a target for budget trimming, although Gov. Tom Corbett's $27.3 billion spending proposal for next year, with deep cuts in education and health care to fill a $4 billion budget gap, included only a $4.3 million, or 1.4 percent, reduction for the General Assembly, to $297 million.
Corbett's budget would not touch the Legislature's $189 million surplus, maintained and widely defended by members as a cushion against a budget showdown with the executive branch, although many are calling for deeper legislative cuts, either to the budget or surplus.
"Surplus moneys should be helping people stay in their houses and not sitting in a reserve," freshman Rep. Tina Davis, D-Bucks, told the Bucks County Courier Times.
If the governor and lawmakers do decide to squeeze more savings from the legislative branch, an obvious place to start would be personnel costs, which currently run about $119 million for House and Senate salaries alone. Most of those jobs also carry a full array of benefits.
In the Capitol, where more than half the Legislature's work force is stationed, the elite end of the salary scale consists of more than 200 people who make at least $80,000 — generally lawyers, committee directors, supervisors and policy developers.
Below them is the bulk of the staff, people who do research, analyze legislation, spread lawmakers' message and perform the sorts of administrative and clerical jobs common to large institutions.
In the House, which publishes much more descriptive job titles than the Senate, the work force has a dizzying array of responsibilities, including 617 legislative assistants, 363 district office managers or constituent outreach specialists, 95 research analysts, 50 custodians (there are 19 in the Senate), two archivists, an editor, an asset manager and a proofreader.
A $36,000-a-year attendant keeps the House chamber and adjoining areas clean and in repair, while a lounge attendant earns $37,000 to, among other things, be available to cut members' hair in an area near the men's room just off the floor.
The other side of legislative staff operations consists of constituent services, more than a thousand people stationed in hundreds of district offices around the state— some within walking distance of each other.
Constituent service is nothing new, but the massive system currently in place in Pennsylvania has emerged from modest origins in the early 1970s to become an institution that many people have come to make their first stop when they have issues related to government at any level.
They are staffed by people trained to avoid ever saying no to a constituent, commonly helping out with driver's licensing and other PennDOT issues, as well as applications for the state's property tax, rent, prescription drug and heating oil assistance programs.
Constituent service information is displayed prominently on official websites, and it would be hard to overstate how much lawmakers value the existing system.
Interviews with representatives and senators about how they understood those resources are doled out produced a variety of answers. Some members have several district offices and a staff of a dozen or more, while others get by with just one office back home and a staff of two or three.
"How we staff our district offices is really a closely held mystery," said Rep. Glen Grell, R-Cumberland, who has one of the smallest complements in the Legislature: a district office manager in Mechanicsburg and a secretary in the Capitol.
"We all represent the same number of people, so if I can do it with one or two, that might be closer to what's really needed than eight or 10," he said.
Roughly speaking, a typical House member has a staff of about five, a typical senator, about 11.
Leaders tend to have the largest staffs, because they supervise many people who serve the entire caucus. Longtime members and committee chairmen also generally get more employees, and many members say they have to justify the need based on workload, but beyond that, staffing decisions can be mystifying.
Asked about the process, the two top-ranking Senate Republican leaders, Joe Scarnati of Jefferson County and Dominic Pileggi of Delaware County, said the "dynamics ... vary for many reasons," including the land area of the districts.
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, said senators "are made fully aware of staffing and district office guidelines."
"Pennsylvania is truly a diverse state," wrote Republican House leaders Sam Smith of Jefferson County and Mike Turzai of Allegheny County. "There is no quota system in place for office space or office work."
House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny, said his members are told decisions are based on district size, location of major communities, patterns of use and "member goals."
According to the 203-member House's most recent annual report on salaries, the chamber's active work force numbered 1,935 at the end of December, with a payroll of $76.3 million.
Some of the data released by the House clerk's office is erroneous, dated or misleading, but it provides the best official approximation of the actual work force. It includes, for example, 99 aides, including 63 current employees, who are supposedly supervised by 16 representatives who retired, died or were defeated last year.
That employee complement document showed the House paid $4.3 million in salaries to 82 people in communications, media, broadcasting, mail and similar specialties. There were four photographers and two photography supervisors.
Ten House chiefs of staff had an average pay of $95,000, while the 56-person corps of messengers and messenger-drivers, a group that includes 11 supervisors and often looks as busy as anyone in the building, pulled down an average of $28,000.
The Senate, which releases its salary data in real time, had 855 employees and a $42.8 million payroll as of late January. Senate job titles are fewer and much broader: administrative, chief of staff, constituency relations, legislative support, policy development and professional-and-managerial.
Not included in the House and Senate pay reports are about a dozen legislative service agencies, such as the Joint State Government Commission and the Legislative Data Processing Center, which together employ more than 170 people and have total budget costs of more than $18 million.
Anyone who has spent much time in the Capitol has likely encountered intelligent, ethical and hard-working legislative employees, and probably experienced their culture of helpfulness — which even extends to reporters. Indiscriminate payroll cuts would certainly sweep away real talent along with dead wood.
"Some of the most competent, intelligent and committed people I've ever met in public and private life have been members of the Legislature's staff," said Steve Crawford, a lobbying firm executive and former House Democratic aide who was Gov. Ed Rendell's chief of staff. "They're an easy mark, of course, but I'm one of their biggest defenders."
Other candidates within the legislative branch for belt-tightening might include the General Assembly's more peripheral enterprises: It maintains a gym, a clinic staffed by four nurses and a physician, and, in the Senate, a lavish private dining room.
The tiny clinic, near the cafeteria in the Capitol's east wing, sees 25-30 people a day, including some of the many tourists and school groups drawn to the palatial building. Harrisburg Hospital is three blocks from the Capitol grounds.
In the Senate dining room, a tradition that goes back more than a century, senators pay their own food costs, although some then submit those costs for taxpayer reimbursement. Two people work there when the chamber is in session, and those two also have other facilities management duties.
The Capitol is served by three separate resident uniformed security forces: 15 in Senate security, 27 in House security and 96 in the Harrisburg operations of the Capitol Police Department, run by the Department of General Services.
Outside Harrisburg, legislative employees tend to focus on constituent service. They most commonly help deal with government agencies — signing people up for state programs, distributing pamphlets and other information about government operations, troubleshooting bureaucratic problems and involving themselves in all manner of federal or local issues.
The two chambers together maintain about 400 district offices scattered around the state, plus dozens of satellite offices that are open only a few hours a week. In the Senate alone, district office rent and utilities have cost nearly $5 million since the start of 2009.
The contingent assigned last year to Rep. Bud George of Clearfield County, who has one of the larger House staffs, included seven legislative assistants, two research analysts, an executive director, a communications specialist, an executive assistant and a lawyer. While some have since left the House, they were paid a combined $645,000 over the course of 2010.
"Years ago you guys said I was the roughest guy to work for," said George, the ranking Democrat on the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. "You're damn right — I'm there to please and to help the people."
Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Philadelphia, said his two district offices, eight miles apart, have assisted more than 11,000 constituents in a little over two years in office.
He said they worked on dozens and dozens of topics, among them birth certificates, library funding, sinkholes, breast cancer screening and snowmobile registration. Forty-two times they were contacted regarding jury duty alone.
"If there are other offices where their staffers are sitting around with nothing to do, I would love to send them to my district offices," Boyle said.
Some offices are busier than others, and House district workers say they have been told how they rank compared to others in, for example, number of pieces of PennDOT mail handled.
Rep. Mario Scavello, R-Monroe, says he runs his operations like a business, complete with evening and weekend hours to serve his commuter-heavy district.
"I have a factory," he said. "On any given day you can have 60 people walk in here."
On the other hand, Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon, closed a district office in Robesonia, about 12 miles west of Reading, after tracking data showed very little demand for it.
"The problem was we were averaging less than one person walking into that office a week," Folmer said. "You're talking about 52 in a year's time."
If the Legislature were to make significant reductions in its own employee complement, it would go against a trend that dates back more than four decades. The state Commission for Legislative Modernization reported in 1969 there were 651 people working for the legislative branch.
The NCSL said the staff more than doubled over the ensuing decade. By 2003, it had doubled again to reach more or less its current size.
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Next week: The many facets of constituent service operations, including the secret records collected and maintained on Pennsylvanians by taxpayer-paid legislative employees.
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