[Reposted from the Pennsylvania Order of Liberty Blog]
DR News: Which Lawmakers Vote with Leadership?
In this Edition:
- Victory!
- Reality Check
- The Reformers' First Semester: Voting with Leadership
- We're Number Last!
Victory!
Citizens scored a major victory this week when Gov. Ed Rendell changed his mind and agreed with the legislature to repeal the link between state and federal judicial salaries. This link, a centerpiece of the pay raise of 2005, was originally repealed in November 2005. However, when the PA Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that judges could keep the pay raise because the repeal didn't apply to them, it became unclear whether the link also would be restored. For two years, Rendell repeatedly stated his support for making state judicial salaries rise automatically with increases in federal salaries.
Citizens scored a major victory this week when Gov. Ed Rendell changed his mind and agreed with the legislature to repeal the link between state and federal judicial salaries. This link, a centerpiece of the pay raise of 2005, was originally repealed in November 2005. However, when the PA Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that judges could keep the pay raise because the repeal didn't apply to them, it became unclear whether the link also would be restored. For two years, Rendell repeatedly stated his support for making state judicial salaries rise automatically with increases in federal salaries.
By upholding the idea that PA citizens, not the U.S. Congress, should decide how much to pay their own public servants, this not only saves millions of dollars, but it begins to restore citizen ownership of their government.
The remaining questions are: How should we decide the appropriate salaries for judges? And how can we get those salaries enacted for the benefit of citizens and judges alike?
Reality Check
735 - Days since the Pay Raise of 2005. See the ticker on our home page.
1 - Law enacted to improve government integrity. See the cartoon .
0 - "Best-in-America" laws enacted. See the campaign .
The Reformers' First Semester: Voting with Leadership
Conventional wisdom says that Republicans exert more party discipline than Democrats. But you can't prove it by the votes of 23 new Republicans and 27 new Democrats in the PA House. In fact, it's the new Democrats who follow their leader with much greater frequency than the new Republicans. Looking at 232 important votes (as of July 9 and excluding resolutions), all first-term Republicans voted with their floor leader less often than all first-term Democrats.
This record makes the first-term lawmakers almost indistinguishable from the veteran lawmakers. The split between veteran Democrats and veteran Republicans is almost as clear and reinforces the point that House Democrats appear to display stronger party discipline than Republicans. Following is the percentage that each group voted with caucus floor leaders:
Freshmen:
Democrats: 91-98%
Republicans: 69-86%
Veterans:
Democrats: 86-99%*
Republicans: 63-89%
* There is one anomaly. Rep. Robert Belfanti, D-Northumberland, voted just 57% of the time with Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, D-Greene. The next lowest Democrat registered 86%.
Click here for an Excel spreadsheet with data for each first-term lawmaker, and here for an Excel spreadsheet with data for each veteran lawmaker.
What explains this unexpected, if not inconvenient, truth about the new lawmakers? Perhaps Republicans are witnessing:
- a new streak of independence among younger members.
- a resurgence of the movement to reclaim the Republican Party for its roots.
- the effect of being in the minority where it often doesn't matter whether rank-and-file Representatives follow leadership.
Perhaps Democrats are seeing:
- the effect of having to govern on the edge of majority so that no Representative can be allowed to stray too far from the party home.
- the influence of a reasonably popular governor of your own party, especially a governor who knows how to raise campaign money.
Maybe we should stop talking about "party discipline" and talk instead of "power discipline." The party names are interchangeable. The effect of power is relatively constant.
We're Number Last!
PA is disgraced to be the only one of the United States not to provide its citizens with free online access to its laws.
That may finally be changing. On June 27, HB 976 passed the House. It proposes to require the Legislative Data Processing Center (nerve central for information about the legislature) to provide public access to the laws that are stored there. The proposal belongs to first-term Rep. Lisa Bennington, D-Allegheny.
Question:
Will the Senate make sure PA citizens have the best access to their laws - the most thorough, convenient, citizen-friendly and well-used system - of any state in America?
Tim Potts
Co-Founder & Chair
Democracy Rising Pennsylvania
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