4 Perks Pennsylvania Governors Keep for Life After They Leave Office
Tom Corbett lost his re-election bid in 2014, the first sitting Pennsylvania governor ever to lose one.
He still collects a $38,765 pension check from the state every year.
These are the perks Pennsylvania governors keep long after they’ve left office.
1. State-Funded Legal Shield
Pennsylvania keeps defending its governors long after they’ve handed back the office keys.
Under the state’s Commonwealth Attorneys Act, a former governor sued over something they did while in office gets a state-appointed lawyer at no cost to them.
Even decades later.
Pennsylvania’s Office of General Counsel decides whether the conduct in question was a good-faith exercise of the job.
If it was, the Commonwealth doesn’t stop at supplying the attorney. It can also cover the cost of a settlement or a judgment against the former governor.
A private citizen sued over an old decision hires and pays their own lawyer.
A former Pennsylvania governor doesn’t have to.
The protection isn’t unique to the governor’s office. Pennsylvania extends it to any Commonwealth official or employee acting within the scope of their job.
But a governor signs more consequential paperwork than almost anyone else in Harrisburg, so the shield carries extra weight for that particular office.
Bad faith is the one exception. If the General Counsel finds a former governor acted maliciously or outside the job entirely, the free defense disappears.
2. Pension Check for Life
Pennsylvania governors earn a pension exactly the way any other state employee does, through the State Employees’ Retirement System (SERS), which pays every vested member a monthly check for life.
Tom Corbett found that out the hard way. He lost his 2014 re-election bid, becoming the first sitting governor in Pennsylvania’s modern two-term era to lose one.
The state still pays him $38,765 a year, the largest of the three pensions on record for Pennsylvania’s living former governors.
Losing didn’t stop the checks.
Ed Rendell draws about $22,358, and Tom Ridge receives around $11,961.
Three governors, three different Pennsylvania paychecks, all of them arriving every year whether the man collecting them still holds office or not.
Each of them also walked away with a separate lump-sum payout built from their own retirement contributions plus interest: $118,378 for Corbett, $96,420 for Rendell, and $45,023 for Ridge.
That’s on top of the monthly check, not instead of it.
How Pennsylvania Builds That Pension Number
Pennsylvania’s retirement system runs on one formula for every governor’s payout: A service multiplier, times years of credited service, times final average salary.
Tom Corbett’s own numbers show how the years stack. His pension counts 11.3 years of combined state service: Four as governor, six as Pennsylvania’s elected attorney general, and just over a year earlier as an appointed attorney general.
Serve fewer years in state government, and the number shrinks.
Serving in more than one elected office doesn’t reset the clock, either. Pennsylvania adds the years together instead of starting the count over.
3. Seat in the Health Plan
Pennsylvania folds its governors into the same retiree health system as any other career state employee once they leave office.
The state’s Retired Employees Health Program (REHP) runs through the Governor’s own Office of Administration.
It’s the same REHP coverage offered to any vested state employee, governor included, who’s earned enough years in the system.
Same plan, same rules.
The program even coordinates with Medicare once a retired governor turns 65, the same coordination every other Pennsylvania retiree in the system deals with.
Premiums come straight out of the pension payment, the same way they would for a retired toll collector or a retired teacher in the same system.
No separate governor-only plan exists.
4. Permanent Capitol Portrait
Pennsylvania grants every departing governor one perk that outlives the job itself: A permanent, state-maintained seat in the Capitol’s portrait collection.
Every governor sits for an official portrait that joins the Capitol’s permanent portrait collection, a tradition that traces back to William Penn himself.
It never comes down.
Tom Wolf unveiled his own portrait before leaving office, adding his likeness to the same wall as Tom Corbett, Ed Rendell, Tom Ridge, and every governor who came before them.
Pennsylvania’s Capitol Preservation Committee looks after the whole collection on the state’s dime, cleaning and restoring older canvases so the earliest governors look as sharp as the newest governors.
A governor’s face outlasts their term by a couple hundred years, easy.
Decades from now, that same portrait will still be hanging in the same Capitol hallway, on permanent display long after the term that earned it a place there.
Psst! How much do you know about Pennsylvania’s governors and the perks other states hand their own? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Pennsylvania Governor IQ
Answer these questions on Pennsylvania governors and the perks other states hand their own. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Which Pennsylvania governor served the shortest term in state history, just 19 days?
Where Pennsylvania Draws the Line
Pennsylvania doesn't hand a departing governor everything, though.
No state law guarantees an outgoing Pennsylvania governor a continuing trooper detail once they've moved out of the Governor's Residence.
No dedicated office, either.
A former governor who wants a state car, a staff, or a security detail after their last day has to arrange and pay for it the same way any other private citizen would.
Some other states go further. A few pay a former governor an extra pension on top of their regular one, or let them keep a trooper around for a set stretch after they leave.
Pennsylvania's version runs smaller than that, funded through the same retirement system every other state retiree already pays into.
Every Governor's Check Looks Different
Not every Pennsylvania governor's pension check comes out the same, either.
Tom Wolf's is the one nobody can even calculate.
Wolf declined a state salary for all eight years he served as governor, the only one of the last four Pennsylvania governors to do it.
Pennsylvania's pension formula multiplies years of service by final average salary, the same formula that built Corbett's, Rendell's, and Ridge's checks.
Zero changes that math.
A final average salary of zero doesn't erase Wolf's years of credited service, but what it does to the payout on the other side of that formula isn't public record.
It's unclear whether, or how much, Wolf is even entitled to collect.
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