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EDITORIAL/OP-ED |
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CONTACT: Matt
Vahey |
State Rep. Josh Shapiro |
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Please consider the following for publication as a guest column --
Reform commission makes lasting impact
Better House rules on tap
Good government is government that works for and by the people it seeks to represent and not just for and by the powerful few. In Pennsylvania, the balance between power and responsibility has become misaligned and the result is that the public has little confidence or trust in their state government. A fundamental realignment is needed today to repair the breach and restore faith in our government.
In his first official act as Speaker, Dennis O’Brien pledged to change the way business is done in the state House. He asked me, a Democrat, along with Republican Rep. Dave Steil to co-chair a bipartisan panel known as the Speaker’s Commission on Legislative Reform. Our task is to recommend reform measures to the Speaker and the full House.
The well-documented abuses of the last decade are a direct result, in part, of House Rules that made these abuses permissible. By recommending significant changes to the House Rules which govern the House’s daily operations, we reduce the possibility for political mischief and establish the conditions that will enable us to pass better legislation.
In Phase I of our deliberations, the Commission, made up of 12 Democrats and 12 Republicans, has laid the foundation for real change in Harrisburg. We recommended 32 substantive and meaningful changes to the House Rules that will shift the power back to all House members, bring more transparency to the legislative process and save taxpayers money.
Openness is an essential component of democracy and protects the integrity of our government and the people it was established to serve. The public must have access to information about what their elected representatives are doing and how their tax dollars are being spent. To that end, the Commission has recommended that all bills, votes, employee salary information and expenditures of the House be easily accessible in electronic format to the public.
We committed to ending late night voting sessions, which are susceptible to passage of self-serving or ill-conceived legislation, and will suspend debate at 11 p.m. We also made it mandatory that members be on the floor of the House to vote and will no longer permit “ghost voting.”
We recognize and condemn the excesses in the House which waste taxpayers’ hard earned money. As such, our recommendations do away with private, taxpayer-funded car leases. We also seek to suspend public service announcements 60 days before the primary and general elections to save tax dollars and minimize the blurring of the lines between campaigning and governing.
Perhaps the most significant change we propose is to severely curtail the power of the Rules Committee. While technically called a “committee,” the Rules Committee rarely, if ever, actually met over the past decade, but its actions have had an extraordinary impact on the legislative process.
In the past, the power of the Rules Committee has been misused to change bills at the last minute without notifying House members or seeking their input. The result was legislation written by a handful of leaders who ignored the months of work and careful consideration put into a bill by members of the House. Dozens of bills were remade in the Rules Committee at the whim of the legislative leaders.
We propose to strip the Rules Committee of its authority to change legislation so that abuse of power could no longer happen.
The full House will vote on the Commission’s recommendations on March 12. For a complete list of the reforms, please visit www.speakerobrien.com/reform. Phase II of the Commission’s work will begin later this month and will focus on broader, institutional reforms that will continue our progressive reform efforts. We welcome your input as to how we can best reform our state government, and I encourage you to e-mail your thoughts to reform@pahouse.net.
We are proud of the work we have done to realign our state government to the interests of those it represents, but recognize that it is only the beginning. Each step along the way, each consensus forged, opens the door for further and broader reforms.
The foundation for reform in Pennsylvania has been laid by the historic work of this Commission. A new day is dawning in Harrisburg.
Rep. Shapiro is the Deputy Speaker of the PA House of Representatives and the Co-Chairman of the Speaker’s Commission on Legislative Reform. He represents the 153rd Legislative District in Montgomery County.
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