Editorial: No mansions for lieutenant governors

There is something about a mansion.

It speaks of the worth of the person inside. It regally registers what is valuable. It proclaims importance.

And it’s all a lie, isn’t it?

A swanky address may speak of net worth but not personal values.

Take, for example, the residence of the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania. It’s a perfectly lovely stone home with second-floor dormer windows and crisp white shutters. It looks like something out of a Jane Austen novel about a genteel aristocratic family making do with only three or four servants.

And Lt. Gov. John Fetterman doesn’t live there. Instead of moving into the 2,400-square foot property at Fort Indiantown Gap, he rented an apartment near the capital.

“Pennsylvania does not owe me or my family a staffed mansion to live in,” the former Braddock mayor tweeted.

He isn’t alone in thinking that. Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, sponsored a bill that would transfer the property to the department of Military and Veterans Affairs to support programs for veterans and National Guard families. It passed the Senate unanimously and goes to the House.

Fetterman, who opened the home’s pool to area kids in June, called the move “a win across the board.” He is right.

It gives resources to a department that actively helps people who deserve help. It removes an executive perk from a position that doesn’t demand it. It reinforces the idea that our leaders are here to serve people, not the other way around.

And it brought the Democratic Fetterman and Republican Scarnati together on an issue that led the whole Senate to follow suit.

What we value should be the common sense to do what is obviously right, and serving many families versus one family is a much better use of Pennsylvania’s resources.

Let’s hope the House members agree.