Outrage, Then Victory Over Lawmaker Greed
For once, voter apathy didn’t doom us to be subject to the whims of our lawmakers. Pennsylvania’s legislators, who set the world land speed record for greed several months ago by voting themselves a disgusting pay raise in the middle of the night after cutting funds to education, child care and other programs, finally faced the music and repealed the damn thing. You know why? Because it turns out the voters really did care.
This is a victory that comes about in large part because of the state’s newspapers. From the Philadelphia Inquirer to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and everywhere in between, editorial pages would not let the issue die and the public responded. I applaud the efforts of the media and hope they get the credit they deserve for keeping the issue in the public consciousness.
And now the obvious question: How do we harness this kind of power for more issues?
Sunday, November 6th 2005 at 11:18 pm |
Trick legislators into attaching a pay raise to every lousy bill they pass?
This is one of those things that’s a little frustrating to me. Not that I’m saying I’m upset that there was pressure to rescind the raise – especially after the Democratic leadership in the state House decided to punish reps who voted against it the first time. I just wish there was a way to muster that kind of reaction when the issue wasn’t quite so obvious. I guess there is a limited amount of emotional energy that people have to give to politics.
Time to go back to the deliberative democracy books . . .
Update: Hold off on the victory celebrations. The state House – wonderful folks that they are – have voted not to concur with the Senate version of the repeal. If I am reading this Inquirer article right, the House is trying to pull a bit of a maneuver. The pay raise applied to judges. The commonwealth constitution says the legislature can’t reduce judges’ salaries. So the Senate repeal measure, which basically undoes the whole thing, would be challenged, and presumably the repeal of the judges’ raise would be found to be not-kosher. What the House wants to do is say that if any part of the bill is ruled unconstitutional, the whole thing is null and void. Man. If you want to give yourself the raise, have the guts to come out and say it.