Is Matt Cartwright Using Taxpayer Funds to Park His Private Plane? He Won’t Say.Collin Anderson • September 9, 2022 10:00 am
Is Pennsylvania’s multimillionaire congressman, Matt Cartwright, using taxpayer dollars to park his private plane while he casts votes on the House floor? He won’t say.
But the Scranton-area Democrat is sending $425 a month to the Delaware River and Bay Authority, which operates the New Castle airport, according to his official office's spending disclosures. That’s the local airport—just a 90-minute train ride from Washington, D.C.—where Cartwright lands his four-seater after jetting in from Scranton, flight logs show.
Four hundred and twenty five dollars also happens to be the going rate for monthly aircraft storage in a "small hangar," according to the airport’s website. Cartwright's disclosures describe the expenditure as a fee for "Taxi/Parking/Tolls" and "District Office Parking," and a spokesman for the congressman did not respond to multiple requests for comment seeking clarification. Cartwright's district is located in neither Delaware nor New Jersey, which is where the Delaware River and Bay Authority operates.
The Pennsylvania lawmaker, who was elected in 2012 and is in a rematch against Republican Jim Bognet, whom he defeated narrowly in 2020 in a district that former president Donald Trump carried, has routinely cast himself as a "fighter for all hardworking northeastern Pennsylvanians."
While the use of taxpayer funds to stow the plane is legal, strictly speaking, it threatens to undercut the image Cartwright is working to present to voters on the campaign trail, particularly as they grapple with rising food, gas, and housing costs.
Cartwright, who made a fortune as a litigator and is worth up to $10.9 million, according to his 2020 financial disclosure, is telling voters that he's "spent his entire career sticking up for working people." ..
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