CRITICAL MOMENT AMID PROFOUND POLITICAL CHANGE
June 2007
By VINCENT P. CAROCCI
June (often morphing into
the first few days if not full week in July) is always the critical period in
setting public policy in Pennsylvania and providing the funds to implement it.
June, 2007 is no different. Except…except in one important, irrefutable respect.
That is that there’s never quite been a time like this in Pennsylvania political
history…certainly, not in the state’s modern political history, at least.
Indeed, through the years, the Commonwealth has experienced (some might say,
suffered through) a number of significant events which, at that particular time,
had serious consequences for the way decisions were made in the State Capitol.
But nothing…nothing at all…on the order of the profound and prolonged political
change which has so influenced the three branches of state government for the
last two years. Nor is there any sign that this climate is about to abate any
time soon.
For context, consider this over the last 30-to-40-year span:
--In 1970, a protracted election-year political stalemate between Republican
Gov. Raymond P. Shafer and, oddly enough, a Republican-controlled General
Assembly prevented a full 12-month state budget from being enacted for the
ensuing fiscal year. That deadlock, in turn, led to the election of Democrat
Milton Shapp to the governorship in November and, for only the second time in
the 20th Century, a Senate of Pennsylvania under the political control of the
Democratic Party. It was this rare political alignment that permitted enactment
of the state’s first personal income tax—historically a political third rail for
those who dared reach out to it--not to mention a number of other long-term
initiatives, including the very successful Pennsylvania State Lottery.
--Democrats retained political control of the Senate for the ensuing 10 years.
But in the process, they became so emboldened, so careless with their newly won
political prosperity that before the decade was over: One of their number (Frank
Mazzei of Allegheny County) was expelled after he was convicted in federal court
on kickback charges; a second (William Duffield of Fayette County) was disbarred
from his private practice of law for misappropriation of a client’s funds,
censured by the Senate and stripped of his standing committee assignments for
the balance of his term; a third (Henry “Buddy” Cianfrani of Philadelphia)
pleaded no contest to a federal charge of payroll padding, resigned and served
time in the Allenwood federal penitentiary; and the Senate Majority Leader
(Thomas Nolan of Allegheny Count), the Philadelphia Democratic City Chairman
(Peter Camiel) and his city patronage czar (Vincent Fumo, later to succeed
Cianfrani in the Senate) were found guilty by a federal jury of payroll padding,
only to have the verdict reversed by the presiding trial judge. (For further
details, link to www.vincecarocci.com, “Excerpts”.)
--These transgressions, as one might suspect, came with a heavy political price.
In 1978, a crime fighting/corruption busting federal prosecutor by the name of
Richard Thornburgh was elected governor. Two years later, Republicans regained
political control of the Senate. Except for one blip in the late 1980’s in a
special election in (where else but?) Philadelphia—the GOP has the remained the
Senate majority ever since. It is a political fact of life every succeeding
governor—Republican or Democrat--has had to contend with in shaping and
advancing his public policy agenda, and it is likely to remain so for some time
to come.
Nor in this period did the Office of Governor and a number of the seven men who
held it escape its share of consequential if not as tumultuous events.
--One (Republican William Warren Scranton in 1964), carrying the banner of the
so-called Eastern Establishment wing of the national GOP, ran a belated and
unsuccessful campaign to deny Arizona U. S. Sen. Barry Goldwater the
presidential nomination of his party; a second, (the aforementioned Milton Shapp
in 1976) made an almost comical bid for the Democratic presidential nomination
only to finish behind “No Preference” in the Florida presidential primary; a
third (Democrat Robert P. Casey in 1993) was forced by his deteriorating health
to relinquish his office to his lieutenant governor (Mark Singel) for six months
to undergo and recuperate from rare but life-saving dual heart/liver transplant
surgery before reassuming the reins of office to finish his second term; and a
fourth (Republican Tom Ridge, 2001) resigned in the wake of Sept. 11 terrorists
attack to become the nation’s first official (later to be secretary) Homeland
Security advisor to the President, to be succeeded by his lieutenant governor
(Mark Schweiker) for the balance of his second term.
--And certainly no review of modern Pennsylvania political history can ignore
the tragic public suicide of the Pennsylvania State Treasurer (R. Budd Dwyer of
Meadville) in 1987 in his Capitol complex office suite at a press conference
convened one day before he was to be sentenced in federal court after being
convicted of accepting kickbacks in a state contracting case. It shattered the
psyche of the state for some time to come, even though its consequences on
public policy decisions was minimal.
All of this came back to me as I was preparing for a presentation to the
Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association in early May on the current
political climate in the state. It was then and only then that I concluded that
for as significant as these events were, none—collectively nor individually—was
as fundamental, sustained and potentially profound as the change that this state
has witnessed in just the last two years.
The catalyst for this seismic alteration in the political culture and pattern of
Pennsylvania was the aborted and ill-fated pay raise enacted by the General
Assembly in the wee hours of the morning in the summer of 2005 just prior to the
traditional legislative summer recess and, ultimately, signed into law by Gov.
Edward G. Rendell.
As has been noted in this space previously, there is never a right time to raise
the compensation of Pennsylvania public officials…never, never, never!!. But
there is a right a way! And the 2005 action of the assembly and the executive
violated “right way” principles in almost every imaginable fashion (www.vincecarocci.com,
Commentary, “Never a Right Time, Always a Wrong Way,” July, 2005.)
The pay grab that reached across all three branches of Pennsylvania state
government was the flash point for a series of retaliatory actions by an aroused
and agitated electorate that was unprecedented in the history—modern or
otherwise—of the Commonwealth.
In the relatively short order of 24 months:
--One state Supreme Court Justice was defeated in his bid for another 10-year
term on the court while another was retained in her retention bid by the narrow
margin of 135,000 votes and subsequently resigned to return to the more
lucrative private practice of law. (By way of perspective, the last Supreme
Court Justice to seek retention prior to the 2005 balloting had been retained by
a margin of well over 1 million votes.)
--30 incumbent legislators voluntarily retired rather than face the anger of the
electorate in the 2006 legislative elections—a 10-fold increase from prior
voluntary retirements.
--Another 25 members of the General Assembly were defeated in either the May
primary election or the November general election, including the six-term
President Pro Tempore of the Pennsylvania Senate and the four-term Senate
majority leader.
--Fully one-fifth of the membership of the General Assembly which took its
collective oaths of office when the 2007-08 session convened for business in
January of this year were first-term lawmakers…and three of the most important
leaders were new to their posts: Speaker of the House; President Pro Tempore of
the Senate and Majority Leader of the Senate.
--House Democrats had won a bare political majority on the back of Rendell’s
resounding re-election. But they were unable to secure the votes of 102 members
of the chamber to elect one of its own leaders as Speaker. So they were forced
to barter with five dissident Republican members to elect an acceptable
Republican to preside over the business and agenda of the chamber.
--Rendell, meanwhile, when inaugurated in January as the state’s fifth two-term
governor, immediately laid out the most far-reaching and (one might say) costly
agendas of any of his predecessors (immediate or distant, one-term or two-term.)
It included proposals calling for universal health care for all Pennsylvanians;
a major alternative energy program; and expensive, dedicated sources of revenue
for mass transit/highway purposes. All of this at a time when projections held
that the Commonwealth was confronting a deficit between $750 million and $1.2
billion (a condition which, according to Spring calculations from the
Administration, was recalculated to magically have dissolved substantially if
not disappeared completely.)
--Deficit or not, in the millions or billions, there still is a serious price to
the Governor’s agenda. He, among other measures, proposed to levy a tax on
employers who did not provide employer-sponsored health insurance for their work
force, and a tax on oil company profits generated within the borders of the
Commonwealth to fund his alternative energy initiative. He also advanced the
possibility of leasing the multi-billion-dollar asset of the Pennsylvania
Turnpike to a private operator to generate additional sources of dedicated mass
transit/highway funding. And, he called for a 1 per cent increase in the 6 per
cent sales tax, one-third of it to be allocated for immediate, enhanced though
still modest property tax relief to homeowners across the Commonwealth, and
two-thirds to fill the aforementioned budget deficit. (With the Administration’s
latest deficit projections, House Democrats are now touting a sales tax
increase, percentage to be determined, totally for a dollar-for-dollar exchange
in reduced local property taxes.)
Two developments of recent vintage also must be factored by the Governor and the
General Assembly to the mix of the moment. The first is that the abortive pay
grab has stirred the electorate to action in ways seldom if ever seen before. An
active citizen watchdog coalition has been constructed aligning such diverse
groups as the Commonwealth Foundation (generally conceded to be on the Right)
and Democracy Rising PA and Rock-the-Capitol.com (generally conceded to be on
the Left) with erstwhile Common Cause somewhere in the middle. An alliance of
this sort would have been unthinkable a few short 25 months ago. What’s more,
the leaders of this movement are enjoying their newfound fame and newly
discovered power to influence political events and decisions on Capitol Hill.
They are not likely to relinquish either, certainly not in the short term.
The second is the increasing vigilance of the media. One notable example is a
series of enlightening and revealing reports from Jan Murphy, Capitol Hill
Bureau Chief of the Harrisburg Patriot-News. In impressive and continuing
specificity over the months following the 2005 pay raise, including just this
week, she reported on questionable spending practices charged to the taxpayers
by members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (from a $3 bag of peanuts purchased
in a hotel gift shop to $12 car washes) and the Pennsylvania Higher Education
Assistance Agency (PHEAA) ($860,000 for seven retreats at costly resorts,
leasing of private airplanes, $100 facials for wives of board members, $175 for
falconry lessons and $491 limo rides to shopping outlets, not be mention
$410,000 in attorney fees to fight media efforts to open the records to public
inspection). Moreover, after months of exhaustive and pain staking research,
Murphy and the paper published a list of more than 3,000 state employees
receiving annual compensation of $100,000 or more. (Surprisingly, and disturbing
to me, was that the Governor of the state, at $164,396 annually, ranked only
80th on the list. The Chancellor of the State System of Higher Education was
first at $327,718 annually. The president of the aforementioned Pennsylvania
Higher Education Assistance Agency was second at $289,118 with the potential for
bonuses up to 60 percent of salary.)
Finally, the media reported in great detail on the numerous bonuses paid to
legislative staff members in both chambers on both sides of the aisle which had
a peculiar though difficult-to-directly link connection to political activity in
the 2006 legislative campaigns. (In the aftermath, legislation was moving
through the House and Senate this spring to have the names and the salaries of
all legislative staffers and their salaries published periodically on the
Internet, while the protocols for bonuses were severely restricted.)
It is an accepted premise among all modern media watchers that, for all its
faults, the press corps at all levels in all places has a voracious appetite for
scandal. Now that the hunt is on, it is not likely to cease any time soon. And
that is to the good of a democratic system such as ours. In the words of Thomas
Jefferson to a Founding Father colleague centuries ago: “Were it left to me to
decide whether we should have government without newspapers, or newspapers
without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Given
what we now know, we can appreciate why,
So where does all this take us? Well, the only truly predictable trait of
Pennsylvania government is its unpredictability. We can draw some early
conclusions, however. The first is that while this governor shows no inclination
to settle into lame duck status any time soon, second terms almost always are
much more difficult for elected chief executives of state. Witness Lyndon
Johnson (Vietnam), Ronald Reagan (Iran-Contra) and George W. Bush (Iraq) at the
federal level; or Milton Shapp (scandal), Bob Casey (health) and Tom Ridge/Mark
Schweiker (management) at the state. Edward G. Rendell is getting some early
lessons on that historical trend as witness the difficulty he experienced in
securing Senate confirmation of two re-appointed members of his cabinet.
The second is that the budget alone will make progress on the Governor’s other
fronts more tenuous. Taxes, of course, what kind and how high, are the critical
questions. A 1975-76 stalemate between Shapp and the General Assembly ran 12
months; the 1991 deadlock between Casey and the legislature ran eight months.
Asking 55 new members of the General Assembly as one of their first major and
most visible votes to raise taxes in the millions if not billions of dollars is
not the easiest of challenges to undertake. Given that most of these members
were elected on platforms of government reform and restraints on spending only
makes the challenge even more imposing.
Finally, in this climate, the true measure of the year probably will not be how
much the government spends; rather, how well it functions. Continued calls for
procedural and structural reform—a reduced size of the General Assembly; term
limits; limits on legislative perks and benefits, and last but not least, a
Constitutional Convention—are likely to dominate the discourse as much as public
policy options. So let the fun begin. And, please, please…stay tuned! It’s
important that you do.
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Copyright (c) 2008 VPC, L.L.C.