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Is this how progressive government works as well?
Submitted by Wally2008 on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 2:26pm.
As the Inquirer chronicled today in an Editorial (link below), Representative Babette Josephs foolishly scuttled H.B. 2420 - a.k.a the redistricting bill - a key piece of reform legislation and a bill she co-sponsored along with a bi-partisan team of 92 other Representatives. Equally befuddling was her rationale behind scuttling the bill, "[w]e have a whole number of land transfers and other bills that sponsors are eager to address."
However, Representative Josephs' blockade of good government legislation and nonsensical rationale is hardly new. In addition to her refusal to act on the redistricting bill, Representative Josephs has refused to act on a bill banning taxpayer funded bonuses, a bill ending the lame duck session, and a bill posting legislative salaries online. The ban on taxpayer funded bonuses passed the Senate unanimously, 48-0, and has sat in her committee since October 2007. Even the recent "Bonus-gate" scandal that rocked House Dems and resulted in the Attorney General issuing 100 subpoenas to House staffers apparently was not enough for her to take action.
If the bill banning gifts and freebies from lobbyists ever makes it to her committee hopefully she will be in retirement.
Do You Know What the Legislative Reference Bureau Is?
The Legislative Reference Bureau, the agency the proponents of House Bill 2420 think would do a better job of decision-making in drawing district lines than a choice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, is an agency whose chief is elected directly by the legislature and whose members are in constant daily touch with members of the legislature.
The Legislative Reference Bureau are a bunch of people competent in drafting bills in accordance with legal requirements, issuing official citations, and publishing state regulations. They have no experience in statistical analysis, social science research, map drawing, litigation in any field, or constitutional law. They also have no dealings with the public; I doubt if anyone here can name member of the legislative reference bureau staff and explain how that person helped him or her solve some sort of problem.
They are far, far less independent of the legislature than is the Supreme Court, which is directly elected by the people, and has its own administrators, staff, operating procedures, and public base of support.
Staff of the Legislative Reference Bureau are dependent upon the legislature for working conditions, hiring, job retention, promotions, personal leave time, vacation time, office space, etc. Members of the legislative reference bureau staff often have good friends in the legislature and on the legislative staff of members of the legislature.
If the Legislative Reference Bureau was in charge of redistricting now, I could see why people would favor a more independent body such as the Supreme Court taking its place. It is very hard for me to see why people would want the Supreme Court to be replaced by a body that is totally dependent on the legislature and has no experience whatsoever as an independent decision-maker.
Other options?
I agree with you that the legislative reference bureau isn't necessarily a fantastic option. But no matter who you give it to, redistricting is a political creature...the lawyer-citizen in me would shy away from giving it to the Supreme Court only because I wouldn't want to subject the Court to the pressures that would accompany redistricting duties. We already elect our judges -- let's not create yet another political pressure point for the judiciary. Is there yet a better option? A commission of some sort?
We Already Have A Legislative Redistricting Commission
We already have a legislative redistricting commission in which the appointee of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is the swing vote for both state house and state senate redistricting, unless the state house and state senate leaders reach bipartisan agreement as to who they want the swing vote to be.
The Supreme Court has picked University of Pennsylvania Law School Dean A. Leo Levin (1971), later a high ranking federal court administrator; Allegheny County Bar Association leader Robert Cindrich (1991), later a federal district court judge and counsel for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; and retired PA Supreme Court Justice Frank Montemuro, Jr. (2001), later a senior judge on the Pennsylvania Superior Court. The one time the legislative leaders agreed on a choice was when they followed the lead of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and picked another University of Pennsylvania Law School Dean, James L. Freedman, who went on to become President of the University of Iowa and then Dartmouth University.
All of the appointees of the Supreme Court have been of exceptional distinction. Most importantly, they had no stake in the results, had no network of friends (or enemies) in the legislature, and were able to play an objective and constructive role.
There is no redistricting plan anywhere that has received unanimous acclaim. Inevitably, some political power bases remain intact and others are split. But Pennsylvania came pretty close in 2001, with the development of plan which had a record low of 11 state court challenges and 0 federal court challenges, leaving a lot of the money appropriated for defending legal challenges unspent.
Do you know what taxpayer funded bonuses are?
Rep. Cohen - Do you know what taxpayer funded bonuses are?
Wally Zimolong
Maverick Republican for State Representative
182nd Legislative District
Yes
And leaders of all four caucuses in both houses have ended bonus payments and started re-evaluating salaries to get rid of the perceived need for bonuses.
Bonuses were not mandated by law, and do not take a law to get rid of. The Senate Bill only bans bonuses under certain circumstances, and thus is far weaker than the absolute "no bonus" policy now in effect. Passing the Senate Bill could well be interpreted as a mandate to create bonuses where they do not now exist.
redistricting
I watched your recent appearance on PCN with Rep. Samuelson on redistricting. What struck me were your comments on the partisan nature of drawing districts and the trading of geographic areas among partisan interests. I don't remember you talking about the priority of political boundaries, counties, townships, municipalities. Too many areas become marginalized by being chopped up and glommed on to much larger areas. A section of a ward of a township that is attached to a neighboring township is not likely to get much attention from their elected official and that area won't have much influence at the ballot. What rationale is there for townships to be divided among 3 or more state house districts? What rationale is there for Montco being represented by so many congressional districts? Districts, congressional and state, should not resemble Rorshach blots. I've looked at other state maps for congressional districts and ours do not compare favorably.
redistricting and partisan competition
Redistricting in Pennsylvania is by and large devoted to protecting incumbents, except when the incumbent is a pain in the next to the leadership of one of the caucuses. (The Democratic caucus being one of the worst offenders in this regard.)
And that is one reason why even in this Democratic year, we have little chance of picking up more than one or two Senate seats. If Senate districts were more balanced from a partisan point of view, we might have a chance of actually gaining control in the Senate.
(The other problem we have is that the Senate Democratic Leadership is utterly incompetent in recruiting, training, and funding candidates. They are about where the House Democrats were six or eight years ago. For all its problems--problems that might cost us control of the House even in this Democratic year--the HDCC is much more effective these days.)
Now Mark Cohen will tell us that we need senior members like him to protect the interests of Democratic constituencies. And that is true, to some extent. But we wouldn't need so much protection if we could actually take power once in a while. And there is a serious conflict between the goal of Democrats gaining power in the Senate and Democratic members in both the Senate and House protecting themselves.
Confirmation Power Changes Arithmetic In Senate
Senate Democrats have the power to withhold votes for the many appointees that require a two-thirds vote, which they have leveraged into de facto majority status in various areas of public policy. House Democratic leaders Bill DeWeese and Mike Veon at one point in the mid-1990's were so angry with the Senate Democrats lack of cooperation with the House Democrats (and their strong alliance with Senate Republicans) that they proposed reducing the confirmation requirement to a majority, to force the Senate Democrats to actively fight for control of the Senate.
Attempts at partisan gerrymandering are based on the assumption that voting returns and voting patterns remain the same over time.
It is amazing how actively contesting elections changes voting patterns. Connie Williams, Allyson Schwartz, Franklin Kury and Andy Dinniman, the new senator from Chester County who had formerly been a longtime county commissioner and state university professor there, are four examples of Democratic Senators who changed voting patterns by actively campaigning for the Senate.
Shortly after I was sworn in as a member of the House in 1974, Peck Foster, a Republican legislator, now retired from the legislature and the York County Republican Chair, who had defeated a Democratic incumbent, summed up a lot of election returns as follows in his rural homespun way, "There never was a horse that couldn't be rode, and never a rider that couldn't be throwed."
A lot of the talk of gerrymandering is just a rationale for inaction by people playing footsie with the Republican Party or just plain discouraged. Pennsylvania's Congressional districts elected an overwhelming Republican majority in 2002, and an overwhelmingly Democratic majority in 2006. There is nothing like a good, hardworking candidate to make district lines look irrelevant. Allyson Schwartz, for instance, deserves credit for turning a district that could have gone Republican in 2002 to a district she won by 2 to 1 in 2006.
We need people to come forward who have the ability to run aggressive campaigns for Senator. It is absurd that, faced with the unpopularity of Senators Jubelirer and Brightbill, the Democrats only ran weak candidates for both seats.
The Senate Democrats can do a better job in recruiting, but unions, civic groups, and individual people have to be much more determined in stepping forward and mobilizing support without first insisting that the campaign and the candidate meet impossible standards of excellence.
Amen to what app said
especially the part about the utter incompetence of Senate Democratic leadership to grow the party. How could the party win one branch of the legislature in '06 and fail to have a plan to win the other branch in what everyone agrees is an even more Democratic election in '08?
What I would tell any new Democrat heading into the Senate--I'm thinking of Daylin Leach and Larry Farnese--is that you are entering a broken house. Fix it. Mere competence isn't going to cut it. Don't wait around to see who the leadership is cultivating for the next round of elections. The leadership is you by default. Keep your eyes open and start looking now for candidates who could defeat Senate Republicans in future cycles and then give them whatever help you can muster.
Areas With Population Change Have the Most Zig Zags
Aajane, areas with the greatest population change--up or down--have the most zig zags. As a general rule, the more the population in a locality adheres in growth to the standard of the state in which it is a part, the less zig zags in the districts there are. This has been called the Goldilocks effect--not too hot, not too cold, readers of children's stories will recall.
Political gerrymandering is a risky business that tends to backfire because it often makes some districts more competive to make other districts less competitive. As a fan of Democratic Congressmen Jason Altmire, Chris Carney, Pat Murphy, Joe Sestack, and Tim Holden, I would like to the Republican National Committee for helping to create districts for them. I would also like thank them for almost electing Lois Murphy to Congress.
Finally, as a representative from what used to be Lower Dublin Township before the current boundaries of the city were set in 1854, I would like to thank the Republicans for helping elect Mike Gerber, Josh Shapiro, and Rick Taylor--and hopefully this year Tom Murt's opponent, by thoughtfully maximizing the impact of Upper Dublin Township by giving so many districts a part of it. We Democrats would likely not be in the majority today if Upper Dublin Township was all in the same district.
The current systems (they are different for the Congressional seats and the legislative seats) maximize accountability. Leaders who goof on redistricting can make a lot of enemies and get thrown out of office, and a the election results can be opposite of those intended. Putting redistricting under the legislative reference bureau would only serve to hide the hidden hands actually drawing the maps and reduce accountability to the public.