Pilot and Pennsylvania Sen. Jarrett Coleman, R-Allentown, is shining the spotlight on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s use of the state’s resources to travel. He says the price tag of over $300,000 in 2024 is one taxpayers should note.
The governor’s flights are split between a PennDOT plane which is available on a first-come first-serve basis to state officials and aircraft flown by the Pennsylvania State Police.
“The data provided by PennDOT is woefully inadequate. The PennDOT logs are full of inaccuracies and omissions. These errors mask the true use of the airplane and thwart a comprehensive evaluation of their use,” Coleman said.
PennDOT regulations state that officials should only use the craft when appropriately timed commercial flights to the destination are unavailable. Between locations in Pennsylvania, that’s the case more often than not. State police planes, according to Shapiro’s office, are only used when the PennDOT plane is unavailable, with police business always taking precedence.
Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder told Spotlight PA Coleman’s callouts are, “bad faith attacks from some who would prefer the Governor not work as hard as he does or show up in Pennsylvania communities outside the Capitol building.”
Coleman and his staff, who are also taxpayer-funded, took the time to match Shapiro’s public appearances with flight paths and other available data to construct a more detailed account of the governor’s travels, which he has made available on his website.
According to Coleman, some of the more questionable uses of the state’s planes include “trips to throw out the first pitch for the third National League Division Series game, attend the Penn State versus Michigan football game, view the solar eclipse with his family and visit Hilton Head, South Carolina.”
Shapiro has said the Hilton Head flights were to leave his family vacation to attend a funeral in his official capacity.
Calling for greater transparency and citing the significant research efforts his staff made, Coleman said, “Taxpayers don’t have the time for all that legwork and shouldn’t have to play detective anyway.”
While Shapiro’s flights exceed those of his predecessor, it isn’t unusual for an executive to fly between appearances. The drive from Philadelphia in the Southeast corner of the state to Erie in the Northwest is over six hours and 400 miles.
Democratic governors in New York and Illinois received criticism for using private jets, even when footing the bill themselves. The New York Post took aim at the hypocrisy of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s $415,000 flights charged to her campaign and their subsequent carbon emissions. Illinois governor and billionaire, JB Pritzker pays for private planes from his own pockets.
Of Pritzker, a report from NBC Chicago 5 wrote, “’It feels wrong,’ said Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois, who noted the use of private money for public purposes concerns him.”
Then there’s the most famous plane of all. In 2021, the Air Force shared that the price to operate Air Force One per flight hour was $177,843. This would indicate that a single roundtrip journey between Palm Beach and Washington D.C. costs taxpayers more than twice the Pennsylvania governor’s flight log in an entire year.
President Donald Trump will soon be making that trip a fifth time since his return to office in January. His office has received additional scrutiny for allowing Elon Musk, arguably the richest person alive and who owns a fleet of planes, to use the craft.
Emissions from private jets have been on the rise over the past few years. On average, two flight hours exceed the average person’s carbon emissions over the entire course of a year. According to the IAE, aviation accounted for 2.5% of the world’s carbon emissions in 2023.
