HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Corbett signed off on a state grant this week for the Arlen Specter library that he singled out during his gubernatorial campaign as an example of wasteful spending after determining he lacked legal grounds to reverse the commitment, a spokesman said.

The approval of the nearly $2 million grant for the Arlen Specter Center for Political Science and International Relations at Philadelphia University was originally made in 2010 by Corbett’s predecessor, Ed Rendell, and it comes as Corbett moves to scale back a $4 billion borrowing program. A Corbett spokesman said it wasn’t the kind of project the governor wanted to fund.