By Tim Potts

It’s been more than four and a half years since the Pay Raise of 2005, three years since the beginning of the Bonus Scandal investigation, and a year since the beginning of one of the most grotesque displays of lousy priorities that any budget process has ever seen.

In a land where common sense and political sense were congruent we would see by now a much different political landscape in PA than we have. We would see a new method to ensure that pay raises are determined and awarded through a public process. We would see an Integrity Caucus of lawmakers determined to ensure that taxpayers aren’t bilked for millions of dollars to rig elections and reward the riggers. We would see lawmakers, who get an extra tax-free $163 per day just for showing up and who are sitting on a surplus of $180 million, refuse to cut $12 million from the elderly and disabled who must rely on SSI.

So where is the new law to rationalize compensation for public officials? Where are the laws with clear lines between right and wrong that can be easily enforced and that carry penalties harsh enough to prevent wrongdoing? Where is the mandate to adopt, on time, priorities that meet the needs of citizens?

Nowhere. The response has been, “We’re sorry, sort of. You can trust us now, sort of. We won’t do that again, at least not while you’re looking.”

Citizens sometimes can count on the minority in the House to make a little noise, but no one – no one – has been as aggressive about integrity as they are about unconstitutional WAMs for sidewalk beautification, Little League fields, minor league hockey rinks and anything else that will make them look good even as they continue to do bad.

Senate Republicans lately are putting on a happy face with their proposed new “ethics” rules. Forget that they haven’t enforced the rules they already have. Forget that these and much tougher rules should have been in place for the last, oh, 200 years.

The great leap forward for which they want lavish credit is just marking time. If their rules are tougher than current law, where is their plan to enact a tougher law? If their rules are weaker than current law, what the hell good are they? Rules are the junk food of governance, and they know it.

Our political leaders can’t even say “integrity” much less enact it. The best they can do is talk about “reform,” a word so meaningless that it ought to be banned from the political lexicon. If they mean “improvement,” they should say it and prove it. And if it’s a fig leaf for more hidden nasty bits, there’s a better word than “reform” for that, too.

Instead of leading PA to a less corrupt and more honest future, they’re simply waiting for citizens to get even more discouraged than we already are.

At the end of January, the disconnect between government and governed was stark in a Franklin & Marshall College Poll. Among voters, 69-72% percent don’t know who they want for governor, but 72% know what they want from government. They want a Constitution convention where they can repair a government that doesn’t give a damn about ordinary citizens if it gets in the way of politicians’ egos, ambitions and tax-funded venality.

Last weekend’s PA Progressive Summit brought all of this home to me anew. At the Friday night presentation of Democratic candidates for governor, no one tried to narrow the divide between the 72% who don’t care about any of them and the 72% who do care about integrity in government.

Then in my Saturday afternoon “debate” with Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, more of problem became clear. His chief argument against a Constitution convention was that we should be more terrified and mistrustful of each other and how we might change our government than we are of our lawmakers and how they already have dismantled democracy.

Instead of accepting the challenge to ensure that the sensible center of our citizenry has the chance to repair the manifest wrongs of the most criminally prosecuted legislature in America today, opponents of a convention like Leach say, in essence, “You think we’re bad? Just look at your neighbors. We may be crooks, but at least we dress a lot better than you do.”

With leadership like this, the best we can expect is a new economic development and tourism campaign: “Welcome to PA, where no one can trust anyone, so please just empty your wallets and go away quietly.”

To the best of their ability, our political parties and leadership seek to ensure that the voices of most citizens are never heard. Whether through excessive partisanship, gerrymandered legislative districts, onerous restrictions on voting and running for office, and other insults to representative democracy, what passes for political leadership in PA is doing its best to make elections contests that produce nothing but bragging rights for themselves.

There is a sensible center in our citizenry. Who among the politically ambitious will have the guts to champion their agenda?

The first step is to sign the petition for a referendum this fall where citizens can decide whether to have a Constitution convention. Go to www.democracyrisingpa.com.

Lawmakers who don’t want one can say so. But we all deserve the chance to vote on it.

The writer is the President of Democracy Rising PA

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 10:52 am and is filed under Front Page Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.