FILE - The Pennsylvania Capitol is seen, Dec. 16, 2021, in Harrisburg, Pa. Four of Pennsylvania’s top universities are getting closer to receiving their overdue state subsidies after the state House of Representatives passed their appropriation on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023, with the caveat the schools must freeze tuition next year.
Matt Rourke / AP Photo
Matt Rourke / AP Photo
FILE - The Pennsylvania Capitol is seen, Dec. 16, 2021, in Harrisburg, Pa. Four of Pennsylvania’s top universities are getting closer to receiving their overdue state subsidies after the state House of Representatives passed their appropriation on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023, with the caveat the schools must freeze tuition next year.
Aired; February 28th, 2024.
If you go to good government group Fair Districts PA’s and FixHarrisburg’s website – there’s a photograph of the Pennsylvania State Capitol with a drawing of a crack down the middle. It represents a state government that the group calls broken. A legislature or lawmakers that make few laws is what Fair Districts blames for what they call Harrisburg’s dysfunction.
As examples, Fair Districts says that during this legislative session, more than half the bills that passed one chamber unanimously weren’t addressed in the other. Only about 7% of bills introduced ever make it to the governor’s desk.
Fair Districts PA Chair Carol Kuniholm
Carol Kuniholm is the Chair of Fair Districts PA and joined us on The Spark Wednesday,”Pennsylvania is among the few full time legislatures, among the most costly, probably the most costly legislature because they have the third highest base salary for legislators, but also one of the largest legislatures in the country. One of our volunteers is quite sure that it costs $1 million a day to run our state legislature, given what she can discover. And we are in the very, very bottom in terms of states, in terms of bills passed or in terms of percent of bills that are introduced that are enacted.”
Kuniholm compared Pennsylvania’s legislature with Virginia — another state that has divided government with one party in the majority in one chamber and the other party with the majority in the opposite chamber,”They passed 800 something bills last year while Pennsylvania passed 77. And people were talking about Pennsylvania’s got a divided legislature. Virginia also had a divided legislature. The Senate was controlled by one party. The House was controlled by another. They have legislative rules that allow bills to get very fast attention and move quickly. It’s not a partisan game. Does the bill have merit? If it does, it gets a vote in committee. If it comes out of committee, automatically scheduled for a vote on the chamber floor. Today’s an interesting day. It’s Crossover Day in several state legislatures. Crossover Day is the day when legislatures (there are 13 that do this) you have to finish in the first chamber by Crossover Day. And those bills go to the other chamber. And they have to be considered in the other chamber. That guarantees that action takes place on bills that have come out of committee. And it means they are far, far more productive than our state legislature.”
Kuniholm says Pennsylvania legislative leaders and committee chairs have too much power in deciding which bills are even considered by the full legislature and she said rule changes would solve the problem,”Let the committee have some say in what gets a vote. If it comes out, take the ability of the leader to say what gets a vote on the floor and just move them forward. So simple changes of rules.”
