Pennsylvania still hasn’t heard from House Speaker Mark Rozzi after his surprise election, and it’s been over a week

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s new House speaker, Mark Rozzi, promised to end all back-room deals and increase transparency in Harrisburg.

He did this just after cutting a secretive deal with Republican leaders to become the top member of the state House. Then he walked out of the chamber and shut the door, closing off any contact with lawmakers, reporters, and the public.

Rozzi, a sixth-term Democrat representing parts of Reading and the surrounding suburbs, hasn’t spoken publicly since Jan. 3. His skeleton staff has hardly answered questions. Rozzi himself won’t answer reporters by phone, by text, or in person.

What’s more: No one knows his political affiliation. He promised Pennsylvanians he’d be the first “independent speaker” in the state’s history. Republican leaders who helped elect him have already begun calling for him to resign because of his failure to change his party registration and his leadership so far. Most rank-and-file lawmakers and leaders are in the dark, just like the public.

All of these unknowns suggest that Pennsylvania residents shouldn’t expect much from their state government this year, experts said.

“This legislative session could be a complete wash,” said Berwood Yost, a political science and government professor at Franklin & Marshall College. “What are the chances that anything really substantive gets done? They don’t look good right now.”

» READ MORE: The Pa. House speaker election is upending Harrisburg. ‘All hell broke loose.’

Last month, political insiders were more optimistic about how Harrisburg will operate this legislative session. Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro, a former Democratic lawmaker himself, will be sworn in Tuesday. Democrats are still poised to take control of the House for the first time in 12 years. A Democratic governor, a razor-thin Democratic majority in the House, and a solidly GOP Senate would force lawmakers to find bipartisan solutions to get anything done.

Instead, gridlock and dysfunction are already underway in Harrisburg, the home of the nation’s largest and most expensive full-time legislature.

And if Rozzi does change his political affiliation to independent, neither party would have a majority in the House if Democrats reclaim three seats in special elections next month. (An analysis by The Inquirer found that Rozzi has voted with the Democratic leader on split votes 89% of the time during his first five terms as a House representative.)

Both the House and Senate came back last Monday after being recalled by Gov. Tom Wolf for a special session to consider creating a two-year window for survivors of childhood sexual abuse to file civil suit as adults against their abusers or the institutions that protected them. This has been Rozzi’s top priority since joining the House, as a child sexual abuse survivor himself.

This amendment should have appeared on the ballot in 2021, but a Department of State error forced the legislature to restart the clock and pass the constitutional amendment in two consecutive legislative sessions all over again.

Rozzi can use the speaker’s gavel to determine when the House will meet and what legislation lawmakers will consider. He announced in a news release last week that the House won’t vote on anything else until the sexual abuse amendment passes.

Rozzi last Monday recessed the House indefinitely, claiming that Republicans and Democrats could not reach an agreement on the rules that govern the special or regular sessions. (The Senate, for its part, gaveled into special session for a few seconds before immediately voting to recess it.)

» READ MORE: What Pa. House Speaker Mark Rozzi’s voting record tells us about how independent he is

The Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday passed the sexual abuse amendment as part of an omnibus package of amendments, including two controversial ones: one requiring voter ID and another that would change how the General Assembly can weigh in on regulatory reforms.

Rozzi had originally received assurances from House GOP leaders that his sexual abuse amendment would be considered on its own, without any other amendments, said Republican Leader Bryan Cutler in a news conference last week.

As the relationship between Republicans and Rozzi fell apart, the state Senate GOP resumed its political agenda and wrapped the sexual abuse amendment in with the two controversial ones, forcing Senate Democrats who oppose voter ID and regulatory reform to vote against the package.

Rozzi has released a few statements since taking the speaker’s gavel. Several of these statements include video recordings of Rozzi speaking from his new desk in the speaker’s office. However, Rozzi has yet to host a news conference or take questions from the media.

Rozzi responded to the Senate’s action — in a prepared statement through his chief of staff — on Thursday that he’s “steadfast in my commitment that the only question on the primary ballot be statute of limitations reform.”

After recessing the House on Monday, Rozzi said he’d be putting together a work group of three Republicans and three Democrats to help sort through the chamber’s partisan issues.

Rozzi announced the six-member panel late Thursday afternoon by news release. The members from around the state were chosen based on conversations with leadership and rank-and-file members from both the Democratic and Republican Parties, he said. He appointed the following members to the group:

The group will meet for the first time on Tuesday and will continue to meet “until a path forward is reached.” They are tasked with finding a way past the state’s partisan gridlock and to “finally provide justice” for childhood sexual abuse survivors, according to the release.

The dysfunction from the speaker’s office hasn’t stopped the usual finger-pointing between Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats said their Republican colleagues have rejected their requests to meet to set the basic rules for how the House will operate this session. Republican leaders, in a letter sent Wednesday, asked Rozzi to use last session’s rules, as lawmakers did in 2007 in a similarly split House, in order to “proceed with the business of the House,” House GOP leadership said.

“You made a commitment to represent the interests of the people of Pennsylvania and to put aside the practice of closed-door meetings and back room deals,” GOP leaders added. “It is time to start our work on behalf of our Commonwealth in open and public session.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are not commenting on their relations with Rozzi.

But until Rozzi makes good on any of his commitments to act as an independent leader or end back-room deal-making, the state legislature is at a standstill.

“Until we hear more from Rozzi and until we see him in action, it’s all a guessing game,” Yost said.