Better House rules on tap

GOOD GOVERNMENT is government that works by and for the people it seeks to represent and not just for and by the powerful few.

In Pennsylvania, the balance between power and responsibility has become misaligned and the result is that the public has little confidence or trust in their state government. A fundamental realignment is needed today to repair the breach and restore faith in our government.

In his first official act as speaker, Dennis O'Brien pledged to change the way business is done in the state House. He asked me, a Democrat, along with Republican Rep. Dave Steil, to co-chair a bipartisan panel known as the Speaker's Commission on Legislative Reform. Our task is to recommend reform measures to the speaker and the full House.

The well-documented abuses of the last decade are a direct result, in part, of House rules that made these abuses permissible. By recommending significant changes to the rules that govern the House's daily operations, we reduce the possibility for political mischief and establish the conditions that will enable us to pass better legislation.

In Phase I of our deliberations, the commission of 12 Democrats and 12 Republicans has laid the foundation for real change in Harrisburg. We recommended 32 substantive changes to the rules that will shift the power back to House members, bring more transparency to the legislative process and save taxpayers money.

Openness is an essential component of democracy and protects the integrity of our government and the people it was established to serve. The public must have access to information about what their elected representatives are doing and how their tax dollars are being spent. To that end, the commission has recommended that all bills, votes, employee salaries and expenditures of the House be easily accessible in electronic form to the public.

We committed to ending late-night voting that is susceptible to passage of self-serving or ill-conceived legislation and will suspend debate at 11 p.m. We made it mandatory that members be on the House floor to vote and will no longer permit "ghost voting."

We recognize the excesses in the House that waste taxpayers' hard-earned money. So our recommendations do away with taxpayer-funded car leases. We also seek to suspend public-service announcements 60 days before the primary and general elections to save tax dollars and minimize the blurring between campaigning and governing.

Perhaps the most significant change we propose is to severely curtail the power of the Rules Committee. While technically called a "committee," it rarely if ever actually met over the last decade, but its actions have had an extraordinary impact on the legislative process.

The power of the Rules Committee has been misused to change bills at the last minute without notifying House members or seeking their input. The result was legislation written by a handful of leaders who ignored the months of work and careful consideration put into a bill by House members. Dozens of bills were remade in the committee at the whim of the leaders.

We propose to strip the committee of its authority to change legislation so that abuse of power could no longer happen. (For a complete list of the reforms, visit www.speakerobrien.com/ reform.) Phase II of the commission's work will begin later this month and will focus on broader, institutional reforms that will continue our progressive reform efforts. We welcome your input as to how we can best reform state government, and I encourage you to e-mail your thoughts to reform@pahouse.net.

We are proud of the work we have done to realign our state government, but recognize that it is only the beginning. Each step along the way, each consensus forged, opens the door for further and broader reforms. A new day is dawning in Harrisburg. *

Rep. Josh Shapiro of Montgomery County is the co-chairman of the Speaker's Commission on Legislative Reform.