The Pros and Cons of the State Treasurer

Bud Dwyer was elected to a second term as Pennsylvania's state treasurer in 1984. At the end of his first term, it was discovered that the state had erroneously overpaid FICA taxes by $40 million. In order to determine the amount of compensation due to each state employee, the government planned to hire an outside accounting firm to perform the work. Thousands of accounting firms submitted a bid for the project, including some who had experience in tax overpayment situations exactly like this one. But on May 10, 1984, the $4.6 million contract was awarded to a company named CTA or Computer Technology Associates, a company whose workforce consisted of only three employees. A few months