Legislative reform is not a bonus
Editor’s Note: The following editorial was written by the Centre Daily Times in State College. House Majority Leader H. William DeWeese, D-Waynesburg, is on a statewide tour, meeting with newspaper editorial boards to talk about the latest capital scandal: paying bonuses from the state treasury to legislative staffers for political work.
DeWeese, for whom the phrase “Harrisburg insider” could have been coined (it fits like the proverbial glove), claims he had no knowledge of the $1.85 million or so paid to Democratic staff members for campaign-related activities. Members of his own staff whom DeWeese jettisoned as though they were Watergate burglars misled him, he insists.
Tim Potts, who used to work for DeWeese but now directs the nonpartisan, reform-advocacy group Democracy Rising PA, must be smiling. A previous scandal, the infamous legislative pay raise, had DeWeese’s fingerprints all over it, Potts told the Centre Daily Times editorial board recently.
DeWeese hasn’t requested a meeting with us, only with the important metro dailies thus far. If he does, however, we’ll ask Potts to sit in. We love to bring joy and uncontrollable laughter especially during the holiday season, to people who are toiling away for a good cause.
But maybe DeWeese really didn’t know about the taxpayer-funded bonuses until they were rudely brought to his attention by state Attorney General Tom Corbett’s investigation, even though the note that accompanied them went out on his own letterhead – talk about inconvenient truths.
Maybe he didn’t really want the salary-increase vote to take place after midnight without debate, and the demotion from committee-leadership positions of Democrats who opposed it was simply a series of coincidences.
And maybe DeWeese, who was elected House majority whip in 1988, majority leader in 1990, speaker of the House in 1993 and served as minority leader from 1994 to 2006, has been an innocent bystander while all the legislative and political shenanigans have been going on all around him.
He does have a way with words, though. In a widely circulated letter to a lobbyist who hired his ex-wife, DeWeese wrote: “Let’s cut to the chase … you sir, are a liar. The measure of the person in our enterprise is his word. When a man comes to my Capitol Hill enclave and stands beneath that impressive chandelier of gold, looks me in the eye with a gimlet gaze, shakes my hand with a sturdy grip and gives me his word, to me, it’s axiomatic that the gentleman is telling the truth. You are an abject, ignoble, mendacious knave!”
OK, Potts, you can stop laughing now. But it is better than crying.
Weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth – those are the appropriate responses, when Pennsylvanians of good faith and character consider their representatives in state government.
The General Assembly is oversized, its members overpaid and outrageously overperked. Even in this, the post-pay-raise Age of Reform, with Democracy Rising and similar groups on the ascendancy, the system, intractable and entrenched, will change only as little as the participants can get away with.
And as long as they have safe seats, as long as House and Senate districts are drawn by politicians, for politicians – a safe Republican district here in exchange for a safe Democratic one there – they will get away with everything they can.
Redistricting – a theme we expect to come back to often during the course of next year – is the key to real reform in the General Assembly. Districts must be based on logical, geographical and municipal boundaries – entire counties, for example so that an election constitutes an actual contest: a Democrat, Republican or (gasp!) even an independent could theoretically win.
And during the redistricting process – conducted by an impartial, nonpolitical panel – the size of the bloated Legislature should be dramatically reduced.
That’s something we’d love to talk to legislative leaders about. Anytime.