Letter: Rules Reform Needed to End Pa.’s Legislature Dysfunction

If dysfunction were measured in fire alarms, Pennsylvania’s legislature would rightly be a five-alarm fire.

Pennsylvania’s legislature, among the largest and highest paid in the country, does appallingly little lawmaking, even when the issue before them is a certified no-brainer.

Our “full-time” legislators in the House met 69 days, and Senate members only 52 days, in the last calendar year.

At the beginning of every legislative session, the two bodies of our bloated, dysfunctional, do-nothing legislature vote on “the rules.” In so doing, members cede power to bring bills to the floor to the legislative leaders, House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, and Senate President Pro Tempore, Jake Corman, and to their hand-picked committee chairs. Republicans in our highly gerrymandered state have COMPLETE control of what’s sent to the floor.

These same Republicans enthusiastically established and voted for expanded vote-by-mail rules, and then, after the election, claimed the expansion was unconstitutional, and mail-in-votes were illegal.

Of the 6% of bills passed last year, 85% were Republican-sponsored, but not just Democratic-leaning bills languish in committee. Consider that 18 cities in Pennsylvania have water system lead levels as high, or higher, than in Flint, Michigan, and yet NOT ONE of FOUR BIPARTISAN BILLS has made it out of committee in the last four sessions.  Our children’s brains—our future—are jeopardized, and NO bill to protect them has made it out of committee.

Our “leaders,” beholden to donors not voters, pass “Banana Split Day,” while “the rules” ensnare important legislative solutions in committee!

Patty Satalia
State College

Mary Bruce Serene, MD
State College