Apr 5, 2006 3 min read

Anyone with a television set and half a brain who watched the conference committee meltdown on PCN Monday night should be livid that House Republicans stymied forward movement on the critical issue of school district property tax reform. House GOP Reps. Lynn Herman and Dave Steil didn’t do a very good job of hiding the monkey wrench they kept jamming into the process. The six-member conference committee is charged with ironing out differences between the Senate and House versions of property tax reform. Committee approval is needed for amendments to move on to full votes in both chambers, a prerequisite for any bill becoming law.

Given how long this issue has dragged on – remember last fall’s big “special session” convened by Gov. Ed Rendell? – it’s incredible that Herman and Steil would essentially beg for more time. The reason? Because their own party, which by the way is the majority party, hadn’t sufficiently shined up its House amendments.

This wasn’t the first conference committee between select members of both legislative chambers. It met a week before Herman and Steil pulled a political rope-a-dope that would have made boxer Muhammed Ali proud. Yet they insisted that their amendments weren’t ready because the state Department of Revenue was slow to provide related numbers.

That might wash if this was something that began only a week ago. But the process has been six months in the making, too long for anyone to throw up yet another roadblock – except perhaps someone one with a political motivation. Senate conferee Chip Brightbill, who serves as Republican leader in that chamber, correctly issued a blistering criticism of what went down Monday.

“This is a tactic of delay, and I feel embarrassed to be part of a committee where someone is participating in that activity,” Brightbill said. “We have been working on this for months and months. We know all the options.”

Senate Democratic Leader Bob Mellow, another conferee, was no less blunt: “This is strictly a way to delay implementation of tax reform. We have an opportunity to do this today. There’s no reason to delay.”

Mellow further opined that Herman, who serves as chairman of the conference committee, could not declare it in recess without taking a roll call vote. Brightbill chimed in that television cameras were rolling, and that citizens across Pennsylvania would witness Herman walking out despite fellow conferees’ protests and objections.

Yet that’s exactly what Herman did. If the Senate used the prior week to revise its plan, the House – including Democratic conferee Rep. Mike Veon, who had his own last-minute amendments – should have done the same.