Feb 8, 2007 3 min read

New Pennsylvania House Speaker Dennis M. O’Brien has pledged a major change that’s long overdue: The House will release a full list of all its employees and their salaries by Feb. 16 – and by Feb. 1 in coming years – in the interest of bringing “openness and transparency” to that body. It’s a big deal only when one considers how difficult it was to find out such information as recently as, well, last week. That’s when a firestorm over secret legislative bonuses, triggered by the leak of a bonus acknowledgement letter authored by local state Rep. H. William “Bill” DeWeese, led to close media scrutiny of that facet of House financial operations.

Problem is that House Democrats alone have 814 employees. Assuming that House Republicans have at least that many, you’re talking 1,600 people. Under the old “information” policy, which in the modern era of communication was nothing less than a purposely-constructed roadblock, you could get base salary information – by asking for it 15 names at a time.

If you wanted more than 15 names with salaries, you had to make a separate information request. So if you wanted to know the base salaries of all 1,600 House employees – information that’s easily available by hitting the “print” button on a computer keyboard or clicking a mouse to send an e-mail attachment – you had to make 107 separate information requests.

Add in the fact that the House Clerk’s office, which supplied the information, could take weeks or months to fulfill a single request, and you begin to see the magnitude of the problem. House leaders, including DeWeese, have been fond of saying the information is available at the clerk’s office for the asking. That’s true, but even if you, as a citizen and taxpayer, had the time to travel to Harrisburg, could you afford to make multiple trips to cover 107 separate information requests?

That’s the system put in place decades ago and promulgated by DeWeese in his prior tenure as Speaker and his long reign as minority leader. In the latter capacity, as DeWeese correctly pointed out last year, he wasn’t in a position to change the House rules even if he wanted to. But as a member of the loyal opposition, he could have made a big stink about it, had he wanted to. As more and more legislators are finding out, a little exposure on the Pennsylvania Cable Network goes a long way in influencing public policy.

As usual, the state Senate has been in a far more progressive mode, publishing employee salary information in a packet since 1981, and currently making it available at a cost of about $20.

There’s no reason the information, in the House or the Senate, should cost anything. Both chambers should put it online immediately, for all Pennsylvanians to readily access. After all, it’s their money, not the legislature’s. And if you don’t like the taxpayers seeing how their cash is being spent, don’t run for office or take a state job.

O’Brien is making the right move, and for that deserves commendation. We hope he goes even further.