Campaign finance reform won't go away in Pa.
The House and Senate wrapped up business before the Thanksgiving holiday and are not scheduled to return to Harrisburg before session officially ends Thursday.
That means an important piece of campaign finance reform legislation sponsored by Vitali and passed by the House of Representatives in March will die in the Senate.
The bill (H.B. 548), known as the Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Public Financing Act, would have provided public financing and set voluntary spending and contribution limits in Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaigns.
"The failure of the Senate to act on this legislation is a real shame because the House vote in the spring brought Pennsylvania as close as it's been in a long, long time to doing something about the disproportionate influence that special interests and big-money campaign contributors have on our elections," Vitali said.
The Delaware County Democrat was particularly disappointed with Senate leaders who allowed the bill to languish in the Senate State Government Committee for eight months. Vitali said the chairman of that committee, Sen. Charles Lemmond, indicated that neither Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jubelirer nor then-Senate Majority Leader Joseph Loeper supported reporting the bill out of committee.
Vitali said his work with various senators in trying to move the bill out of committee for a vote by the Senate gave him a better idea of what could be accomplished. He said it became apparent that there still is a fair amount of resistance to the idea of publicly financed political campaigns in Pennsylvania.
As a result, Vitali intends to introduce broader legislation during the 2001-02 legislative session that addresses contributions limits in all races at the state level without the public financing component, as well as reintroducing the Gubernatorial Public Financing Act.
"If public financing is a major stumbling block, we will give the legislature the opportunity to start reforming the system without it," he said. "The bottom line is that the process of reform must begin."
Vitali said he expects groups like Common Cause, AARP and the League of Women Voters to continue supporting campaign finance reform legislation, and bipartisan support for reform in the House and Senate to grow even stronger.
"As public awareness of the problems inherent in the current system for funding political campaigns continues to grow, pressure will continue to mount for the General Assembly to act," he said.