Paying for votes
The Associated Press last week reported that 34 businesses and individuals with ties to gambling spent $575,000 in just three months influencing how the state Senate would shape the gambling bill. How much was spent swaying House lawmakers or the governor’s office will never be known. That’s because Pennsylvania lacks a lobbyist disclosure law. The state Senate tends to allow the public a glimpse through the glass window its sausage-making process. The House shies away from allowing the public the slightest peek.
That could change, if enough opened-minded reformers can be found in Harrisburg. The Senate State Government Committee this week endorsed a bill that would restore a stricken lobbyist-disclosure law. The House has a similar bill in the works, but it stalled in May. The House must pick it up before the session adjourns Nov. 30 or the entire lengthy bill-making process will start over.
It isn’t as though the either the House or Senate isn’t willing to bend rules to advance legislation. They did it with the gambling bill. The 145-page bill legalizing 61,000 slot machines at seven racetracks, five stand-alone parlors and two resorts (Nemacolin Woodlands is expected to be one of them.) bypassed the lawmaking process.
That piece of legislation benefits horse racing and gambling concerns that spent the millions seeing to it that the votes lined up and the provisions protected their interests. In addition to the $575,000 spent lobbying the Senate, millions more have been spent on donations to political campaigns. At least that money is traceable.
It is impossible to track who is influencing House members or how much they needed to spend to win favors. That must change. Lawmakers must realize that the public has grown weary of their secrecy. For once they need to vote on the side of good government.
Ideally, a lobbyist disclosure law should require lobbyists and those who employ them to register and disclose how much money they have spent, how it was spent and which bills were the target of their interest. Neither pending bill goes that far, but it would be a start.