Two chronic addictions afflict Pennsylvania these days: opiates and political corruption. It’s a toss-up as to which is more lethal.

In February 2015 former state Treasurer Rob McCord pleaded guilty to attempted extortion. Months later it was reported that McCord, a Democrat, had turned state’s evidence and wore a wire for federal agents hoping to record evidence against more co-conspirators.

Now a second former state treasurer has been implicated.

Barbara Hafer, a Republican-turned Democrat, two-term treasurer — and before that a two-term state auditor general, is charged with two counts of making false statements to federal agents and concealing payments of nearly $700,000 from an investment firm, the U.S. attorney’s office in Harrisburg said Thursday.

It doesn’t take a lot of smarts to figure out the plot line.

In separate counts, suburban Philadelphia businessman Richard W. Ireland, a longtime contributor to state-level politicians, is charged with bribery. Agents allege Ireland received a share of fees charged by private asset managers contracted by the Treasury Department while Hafer was in office. Prosecutors said payments from Ireland to Hafer totaling $500,000 began within weeks of Hafer leaving office in 2005, when she was working as a consultant, and did not require her to achieve any particular result in return for the money.

Hafer’s consulting firm was paid another $175,000 in 2006 and 2007, prosecutors said.

Ireland also faces multiple counts in what it described as an effort to bribe McCord with more than $500,000 in secret campaign contributions between 2009 and 2014.

Hafer, 72, of Indiana, Pa., served as treasurer from 1997 to 2005 and as auditor general from 1989 to 1997.

Maybe McCord assumed he could get away with such financial shenanigans because he knew his predecessor Hafer had gotten away with them too.

Call it the politics of hubris: the suggestion that unethical conduct is noble if everyone else is doing it.

But there is an alternative possibility. According to Hafer’s lawyer, she’s innocent and McCord is setting her up, attempting to shift the blame on his predecessor.

Either way, it appears as though millions of dollars in fees were paid to Ireland and his associates. The indictment against Hafer states he managed hundreds of millions of dollars in state assets — not because he was the most capable asset manager but because he bribed two state treasurers to obtain the right.

In light of what we know about the state’s ongoing pension crisis — the unfunded liability is approaching $64 billion by one estimate — it’s a disconcerting revelation

For Pennsylvania’s working class, here is the bitterest of bitter ironies: As a multiyear, highly paid employee of the state, Hafer qualifies for monthly payments from the pension fund. She currently receives a monthly payment of $4,035, or $48,420 a year.

Hafer becomes the third Pennsylvania state treasurer to be indicted on corruption charges. R. Budd Dwyer was found guilty of exchanging no-bid contracts for campaign contributions in 1987.

Dwyer, a Crawford County Republican, called a news conference Jan. 22, 1987, and committed suicide with a .357 magnum revolver.