Jan 14, 2008 2 min read

Some 55 Pennsylvania state lawmakers chose to retire or were defeated at the polls in November 2006. With the next election 10 months away, 18 additional lawmakers have announced retirement plans, with likely more to come.

That means that in the course of two years more than a quarter of the seats in General Assembly will be held by newcomers, with possibly more than a third replaced with fresh blood after this November.

This raises a salient question: Is there a tipping point when there are enough sitting “reformers” to actually produce a serious overhaul of the Legislature?

Or do the reformers, after a few years on the job, become comfortable with their role as part of the ruling elite and defenders of the usual way of doing things?

If it is the latter, legislative reform amounts to a dog trying to catch its tail, which is to say there is much spinning and ruckus, but not much else.

We are not so cynical as to have given up hope on reform. We note that important internal changes have been made, but the broader reform effort – aside from a serious move to improve access to public records and a smoking ban – has been pretty much invisible.

We keep looking for that moment of reformist synergy, for that tipping point in the balance of power that will finally deliver the kind of representative government people hunger for.