Clock ticking on legislative reforms
Six months have passed since Pennsylvania voters sent a historic message to the state Legislature, demanding an overhaul in how government does business, starting with the need for more openness and transparency. To date, while the House and Senate have nibbled around the edges, changing some of their internal operating rules to accommodate those goals, no new legislation has been approved. The lack of formalized progress is making some good-government activists antsy, with good reason. While both chambers of the Legislature deserve credit for moving in the proper direction, and for making some internal changes designed to restore public confidence, the relatively slow pace of substantive progress on revamping actual laws is cause for concern.
Simply changing the rules isn’t enough. They can be easily changed in the future, in a regressive way, and they have no penalties for noncompliance. And every single rule governing the House and the Senate could be changed without correcting one major flaw: The Legislature’s inexplicable exemption from the open records law.
As the Bonusgate story that broke in January proves, there are plenty of nooks and crannies where for far too long Legislative leaders have been able to hide uses of public money from public view. The only cure-all for shining light into that deep recess, and any others that we still don’t know about, is an open records law that presumes all records are open, with limited exceptions.
That’s exactly what the bill put forth by local state Rep. Timothy S. Mahoney (D-South Union) would do. Gov. Ed Rendell has also announced his support for a version that would do the same. Both of them have superior approaches than the one favored by Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware), who wants to widen the open records law’s applicability but, in a move protective of the status quo, would not presume that all government records are public records.
The House Speaker’s Reform Commission has made one set of recommendations, the vast majority of which were approved as rules changes, and in coming weeks it will tackle campaign finance, open records, term limits and the Legislature’s size. But these, like the first batch , are merely nonbinding recommendations. There is no guarantee that any of them will be enacted into law.
While we won’t hit the alarm button just yet, we will agree with Chris Lilik, president of the Young Conservatives of Pennsylvania, that “what we need are dramatic changes.” They haven’t come about – yet.
But with the next election less than 12 months away, legislators should know the clock is ticking. If they don’t act, the people will speak again. This time, even louder.