There’s a good reason that earmarks have largely become toxic in American politics: they’re a nasty and counterproductive habit that makes it easier for government to be wasteful and corrupt.

There’s also a good reason that, seven years after a ban on congressional pork, the nation still funnels billions of dollars into legislators’ pet projects: lawmakers love a good barrel of pork.

And while it’s normally the federal government’s pork habit that’s the focus of Americans’ wrath, we were recently reminded that the practice knows no bounds. It’s alive and well in Pennsylvania’s state government too.

An analysis released last week by the libertarian-leaning Commonwealth Foundation rooted out $65 million in earmarks hidden in Pennsylvania’s fiscal code, which is a companion bill to the 2017 budget that details the state’s spending.

Here’s an example of the fiscal code earmarks that hits close to home:

“$900,000 shall be distributed to a community college in a county of the fourth class with a population, based on the most recent Federal decennial census, of at least 175,000, but not more than 190,000.”

In plain English, the Foundation says, that means Butler County Community College.

Don’t misunderstand. We’ve written before that the state needs to do more to support and expand community colleges in Pennsylvania. BC3 is a worthy destination for this money.

And there are surely other worthy destinations hidden in the gobbledygook legislators tucked into the Fiscal Code: there’s money for long-term care and medical assistance, autism intervention and childcare, veterans care and post traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse treatment in prisons, agricultural research, and more.

But that’s not clear until you decode the vague, arcane language written into the fiscal code (which, we should note, still needs approval from the House) that lays out what the money is for and where it’s going.

It shouldn’t take an analysis and translation by a public policy think-tank to unmask where this money is going. People shouldn’t need a cipher to figure out exactly where and how the state is spending this $65 million — especially when lawmakers can’t agree on how to pay for a $32 billion state budget that is $2 billion out of whack.

In general, earmarks give free rein to lawmakers’ worst impulses. They promote corruption, back-scratching and loose fiscal policy, and give elected officials a way to avoid the oversight and review that’s essential when it comes to determining whether public money has been spent wisely and funded worthy projects which achieved real results.

Essentially, they’re a substitute for good governance, transparency and accountability during the budget process. As Pennsylvania enters the eighth week of not knowing how — or when — the state will pay for its expenses, it’s clear that the commonwealth could use a lot more of all those things.

—PAR