Leaders tee off during reform meeting
Gov. Ed Rendell got an earful this week when he presented his six-point government reform agenda to lawmakers at his Harrisburg mansion. Sources at the Monday night meeting said lawmakers – particularly legislative leaders – were openly hostile to Rendell as he pitched an agenda for open records, campaign finance reform, term limits, and reducing the size of the Legislature, among other proposals.
Rendell’s Spokesman Chuck Ardo said the meeting was a “frank and open exchange of ideas.” But one freshmen lawmaker there described the finger-pointing scene as dangerously explosive.
“It was like throwing gasoline on the floor,” he said.
The invitation-only event went out to the more than 50 new members, though fewer than half showed up and came after Rendell had already presented his reform platform that morning to the Harrisburg press corps.
Leaders were apparently offended that the governor didn’t consult them first, especially since his reform items mostly had to do with changes to the Legislature.
“Everyone was taken by surprise and some people were more than frustrated,” said Rep. Jim Marshall, a Beaver County Republican.
Marshall said he got an e-mail invitation that did not indicate of the purpose of the meeting. He said the freshmen class hadn’t met with the governor since being sworn into office in early January, and he thought the meeting would be an informal meet-and-greet event to exchange ideas with Rendell.
What they got was a formal podium presentation.
“The governor got up and said, ‘While we’re on this reform movement, I want to cut the Legislature in half and I want to impose term limits of eight years and we want to have campaign finance reform,’ ” said Marshall.
Rendell joked about the campaign finance portion, noting how funny it was that he, who had raised $32 million in his last campaign, would be at the forefront of that change, Marshall said.
“He lost the crowd by that point,” Marshall said. “No one was in any kind of a joking mood.”
Senate Democratic Leader Robert Mellow, House Democratic Leader Bill DeWeese, and House Republican Leader Sam Smith then reportedly took the charge.
No big surprise there.
According to sources, they griped about how the reforms would raise public anticipation and they would all be judged in next year’s election on what they had, or had not, accomplished.
Let’s move on to other issues … like the budget, health care, mass transit, the leaders said.
Further details were not easily obtainable because few lawmakers really wanted to hash out what happened.
Smith’s Spokesman Steve Miskin said his boss thinks “reform” should be about making sure people aren’t trapped in a snowstorm for 20 hours and personal care homes are regularly inspected. Those are among problems in the governor’s hands.
OK, maybe Rendell isn’t the most believable ambassador of reform. But it’s clear none of them are.
What records?
Here’s a little proof. One of the House’s big rules reforms was giving the public lawmakers’ spending records over e-mail.
Apparently, they didn’t mean past records. The House Clerk’s office said that electronic records will only be available from March onward because they have had to develop a new system for compiling the documents.
Also, you still have to come to Harrisburg to view receipts, which contain all the interesting details about the spending items. And here’s the clincher: The electronic records will be sent as images for print out and not in the form of a spreadsheet that would allow the user to use the data for investigative purposes, like say, tallying up everything spent on “business meals.”
This may sound like quibbling over details, but the beauty in getting electronic documents is to save all the sweat involved inputting data, keystroke by keystroke, into a database.
So yeah, they’re giving us more stuff. But it’s the bare minimum.
Alison Hawkes can be reached at 717-705-6330 or ahawkes@calkins-media.com