The LuLac Edition #3698, January 17th, 2018

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

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This week’s piece comes straight out of The Citizen’s Voice. The paper asks the question does Pennsylvania need a full time Legislature?
I say no. With communication and transit more enhanced than days gone by, consolidation is a no brainer. Plus the Legislature has moved at a glacial pace in meaningful changes to the very survival of the middle class in Pennsylvania. Here’s what the Editorial Board had to opine.

IS FULL-TIME LEGISLATURE NECESSARY?

Pennsylvania lawmakers use several theories to justify their expensive full-time status, even though many other states, including large ones, get by just fine with part-time legislatures.
The sheer volume of government business requires full-time attention, they say. Constituents need and deserve full-time advocates, they claim. And they fret that bureaucrats, rather than elected representatives, would be in charge if lawmakers were to become part-time.
And, they contend, part-time lawmakers would be focused on their full-time occupations rather than on public business.
Those arguments are not particularly convincing, and even less so because, as a practical matter, the Legislature isn’t really full-time.
Pennsylvania’s 253 legislators are paid a base salary of about $86,000 a year, plus daily expense payments for which they do not have to provide receipts, along with platinum benefit packages and diamond-level pensions and enhanced pay for assorted assignments. They take six-week summer vacations and end the year after the November election, while regularly failing to attend to important public business, like adopting a budget on time.
Yet, as reported by the state-government journalism group, the Caucus, more than half of the members of the General Assembly have outside employment and ownership interests in private-sector companies, creating conflicts of interest in many cases and raising serious questions about full-time attention to legislative business in all of them.
The state Constitution requires any member of the Legislature who has a personal interest in any matter subject to pending legislation to disclose it and refrain from voting on the bill.
Historically, however, lawmakers have taken that as a suggestion. Former state Sen. Robert Mellow, for example, for a time was a paid member of bank and insurance boards of directors while sitting on legislative committees specifically relevant to those industries.
Lawmakers are required to report their financial interests, but it is rare for any of them to abstain from votes on related legislation.
Part-time legislators would not be immune from conflicts. But they would be more obvious to the public because of each individual’s occupation. And, because a part-time body would have tight deadlines, it likely would be more productive and accountable.
Part-time status is no more likely than term limits, which would be justifiable if the current system worked as advertised.
http://citizensvoice.com/opinion/is-full-time-legislature-necessary-1.2290996