http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/regional/s_368261.htmlMore bucks, fewer seats?
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By Brad Bumsted and Debra Erdley
Sunday, August 28, 2005
The free-spending ways of the nation's largest full-time General Assembly may have lit the fuse that could knock it down in size.
Spurred by public outrage over the Legislature's 16 to 34 percent pay hike and the disclosure of a $135 million leadership slush fund, state Rep. Paul Clymer, R-Bucks County, said last week that the state House Local Government Committee will air proposals to slash the size of the 253-member General Assembly.
Obviously, it is still a long shot, said political scientist and pollster Terry Madonna, who has studied the Legislature for three decades. But Madonna, who is director of polling at Franklin & Marshall College, said the environment in Harrisburg is volatile and unpredictable.
"There is enormous pressure on legislators. There is nothing I've seen in 30 years of covering politics that even comes close to that," Madonna said. "This has no rival in terms of intensity."
Public outrage ignited in July when Pennsylvania legislators raised their base pay to $81,050 for rank-and-file members and $89,155 for committee chairmen. With a cost-of-living increase after the November 2006 election, lawmakers are likely to receive several thousand dollars on top of that base.
Some analysts aren't sure the public outrage will translate into legislative action.
"They are not going to reduce the size of the Legislature," said Joseph DiSarro, chairman of the political science department at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington County. "If they try to reduce the size of the Legislature, they will come into conflict with their own members, various interest groups and constituents."
Clymer, the Local Government Committee chairman, is awaiting proposals, promising they will not die quietly as many previous attempts have.
"I will give this an airing," he vowed, referring to proposals being drafted by state Reps. Jesse Stairs, R-Westmoreland, and Thomas Caltagirone, D-Berks County.
Caltagirone's bill calls for 127 legislators; Stairs wants 191.
Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jublelirer, R-Altoona, said he won't block discussion of the issue.
"It's something we need to talk about this fall. ... I think it's right to raise the profile (of the issue). I think it is right to consider it. I wouldn't rule it out," he said. Jublelirer said he's personally conflicted weighing cost savings against less representation for rural areas.
Caltagirone said his model could slash the amount the Legislature spends on itself and its overhead by $200 million, or about $16 for every man, woman and child in Pennsylvania.
The Legislature's budget for the year that began July 1 is $432.2 million. That means it is spending $882 a minute for salaries, benefits, travel, dining, staff, computer services and associated operating costs. But it also has a $135 million slush fund the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review recently highlighted.
That means more than a half billion tax dollars cannot be used to reduce property or business taxes, finance cash-strapped mass transit systems in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, repair crumbling roads and bridges or fill the gap in state Medicaid programs that recently forced families with disabled children to take on a second insurance premium.
"There are no controls on (legislative spending)," said Michael Young, a retired Penn State professor who works as a consultant and pollster. "One of the problems is accountability. There is not enough information about what they are spending money on, and how much they are spending."
In part, that is by design. The Legislature is not subject to the state's public records act. Nor is it subject to audit by the state's chief fiscal watchdog, Auditor General Jack Wagner.
Reformers have failed to shrink the General Assembly for decades.
Former state Sen. Allen Kukovich, now Gov. Ed Rendell's regional director in the Pittsburgh area, cosponsored measures to downsize the Legislature every session for 27 years. Kukovich said the measures only drew support after the Legislature gave itself a raise, and even then the bills died in committee.
It has been 131 years since the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1874 increased the size of the General Assembly in an effort to make it harder for special interests to buy votes. The measure doubled the size of the House from 100 to 200 and increased the Senate from 33 to 50 members. An additional 3 members were added to the House in the first half of the 20th century.
Stairs acknowledged the renewed effort to cut the Legislature's size is no sure bet.
"But right now a lot of legislators, including the leadership and the rank and file, are looking for a way to get out of the mess they're in," he said.
Political analyst Joseph Sabino Mistick, a Duquesne University law professor, said Stairs may be right.
"There is a feeling out there that some type of reform is necessary and may be possible," Mistick said. "The issue can fade away into the distance, or the whole thing can be fed by the participants in the spectacle."
The only ways to reduce the size of the Legislature would be to convene a constitutional convention, or for lawmakers to approve a bill in two consecutive sessions, then pass it on to a statewide voter referendum.
Robert Strauss, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of economics and public policy, said Pennsylvanians pay a price beyond the legislative largesse they underwrite for the General Assembly.
Strauss, who advises policy makers on tax issues across the nation, has watched Pennsylvania struggle with tax reform for 26 years. He's watched homegrown businesses move out and heard outsiders say they'd move in, if only the state would update its property tax assessment and business tax laws.
He attributes the stalemate to systemic problems with the Legislature.
"Nobody has seriously tried to make the General Assembly smaller or tried to get public disclosure of public documents," he said. "We are where we are because we the voting public has been unable to try to figure out a way to do things differently."
Some voters are looking at how state government operates elsewhere.
Pennsylvania lawmakers like to point to New York and California, both of which compensate lawmakers as full-time professional employees. But both of the states have more people than Pennsylvania yet get by with fewer legislators: 120 in California and 212 in New York.
Harry Meyer, of South Fayette, is among those who said the pay raise has opened their eyes to lawmakers' excesses.
"I travel to New Hampshire, and the last time I was there, legislators were paid $100 a year. They have 400 legislators (actually 424). That's $40,000 for the whole Legislature. That's half the salary of one Pennsylvania legislator," said Meyer, a retired state employee who tends an apple orchard on his Allegheny County farm.
Historian Paul Beers, a Harrisburg-based author, disagrees that state legislators should be reduced in number.
He defends the General Assembly and argues that "bigger is better" in state legislatures. With smaller districts, legislators can provide better constituent service, Beers said.
If the General Assembly's size is reduced, "we'd be selling our heritage for a few shekels," he said.
Kukovich counters that a large legislature makes it easier for legislative leaders to disenfranchise rank and file lawmakers. "And when you disenfranchise the rank and file, you disenfranchise the people," he said.
Mistick warned against too much tinkering.
"If you make the Legislature too small, it could fall under tighter control of the moneyed interests," Mistick said.
House Minority Leader H. William DeWeese, D-Greene County, opposes downsizing the Legislature.
"Small counties like Rep. DeWeese's Greene County (population 40,000) would very seldom be able to send a homegrown advocate to the state Capitol," DeWeese spokeswoman Barbara Grill said.
State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, said he fears cutting the size of the Legislature could create "an institutional Republican majority" in the state House.
But these days Frankel isn't discounting anything.
"It's something I'm willing to talk about. It's probably something we should have discussed in conjunction with the pay raise," he said.
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Is the PA state Republican Party trying to commit suicide? If this goes through, I know what is going to happen. They are going to eliminate rural seats and then expand urban seats out into the suburbs, thus making the legislature solidly Democratic until the next realignment. What in the Hell is thier problem?