I’ve gotten a couple “Good Questions” lately about a long-running practice that many governors and presidents practice when signing bills in law — they use a heck of a lot of pens!
Gov. Doyle using a lot of pens to sign legislation.
As you can see in the picture above, the governor used a lot of pens to sign this particular legislation. It’s hard to count…but I would guess there’s 15 pens here. That leads to the questions I’ve gotten over the last few weeks…
Just last week we saw on Channel 3, the Governor signing a bill. In this time of bad economy, why such wastefulness using a dozen different pens to sign the legislation? One pen works for most of us for six months or longer. And it is not a good advertisement for Parker Pens if it takes a dozen pens to put out enough ink to sign Mr. Doyle’s name a couple times.
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My husband was watching the news and saw President Obama, Governor Doyle, just to name a few, use so many pens when they sign something. Why is that? I feel that in a time of budget restraints, they should only have to use one pen to save the tax payers some money.
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Why does the governor and president use a dozen pens to sign one paper/bill? Are they auctioned off and the money goes to charity or what? I’ve been wondering this for years.
I got in touch with Gov. Doyle’s office today for the answer. Carla Vigue tells me sometimes the governor uses one pen…and sometimes he uses as many as 20 pens — it all depends on how many people helped pass the legislation. The pens are then given to those people as a little “thank you” gift from the governor for all their work.
By the way, the pens are made by Sanford in Janesville. They cost $2.94 each.
