I recently used Facebook to post an old column in which I concluded Florida is our stupidest state.
Given the fact that it’s about to become the first state to do away with mandatory vaccinations for school children — make measles great again! — it’s safe to say that nothing has changed. Florida is still really stupid.
I shared the column because Pennsylvania continues to give it a run for its money when it comes to our Legislature, which most recently is months past its deadline for passing a budget, inflicting terrible harm on public schools, social service agencies, public transportation users and many others who depend on state funding.
By law, the next year’s fiscal budget must pass by June 30, but this deadline routinely has been missed over the years, particularly when the executive and legislative branches are divided between the parties. The state had a nine-month impasse in 2015-2016, with disastrous results for many Pennsylvanians. Given our increasingly harsh economic environment, this one has the potential to do even more damage.
When the state Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that state workers had to be paid during these budget battles, it removed one of the strongest incentives for legislators to behave semi-responsibly. Not surprisingly, a bipartisan House bill introduced this summer to withhold pay from legislators, the governor and lieutenant governor until a budget passes is going nowhere. But wouldn’t it be great if we could make these politicians suffer financial hardship for their incompetence?
One of the amazingly stupid things about Pennsylvania is that despite having one of the most expensive and dysfunctional legislative bodies in the nation, we mostly return the same people to office, election after election. I can’t tell you how many “throw the bums out” columns I’ve written over the decades, with no perceptible dent in our self-destructive apathy.
Some of this can be blamed on gerrymandering, which carved out districts so well crafted to protect incumbents of either party that legislators felt no accountability to anyone but the party bosses who controlled the maps.
Lots of hard work by good government groups has resulted in less crooked maps — mostly because of the intervention of the state Supreme Court — but until we remove politicians from the process altogether, incumbent protection still will be the top priority. Not surprisingly, bills that would begin the process of changing the state Constitution to create an independent redistricting commission haven’t gotten anywhere.
But I think our failure to throw the bums out goes beyond gerrymandering. It’s laziness. It’s ignorance. It’s wrong priorities.
Constituent services, for example. Every legislator has staff who can help you negotiate specific problems with state government. The fact that his or her office helped expedite your application for a replacement car title is no reason to vote for this person.
Look instead to their real record — and at all the ways our Legislature is failing us. Where do I start with things they should be doing, but aren’t?
How about reforming our antiquated statutes of limitations for survivors of past child sex abuse, an effort blocked for years now by Republican party leaders’ cynical insistence on tethering the issue to their partisan political priorities and many legislators’ allegiance to big campaign contributions from the Catholic church and insurance industry?
We’re hearing a lot these days — as we should — about the Epstein files and the Trump administration’s determination to protect pedophiles from exposure and distract the public from demanding action. But we’re not hearing nearly enough in Pennsylvania about the way our failure to open a one- or two-year window for lawsuits by survivors blocked by the statute of limitations, something many other states have done, is protecting pedophiles right here and denying their victims a chance to confront them in court.
How about our disgraceful charter school system, particularly with cyberschools, which continues to drain our public schools of funds they desperately need in a system that lacks accountability and even a semblance of fairness?
How about a tough gift ban bill that would finally stop the legalized bribery of our legislators by well-heeled lobbyists? How about property tax reform? How about term limits? How about making it easier to vote instead of finding new ways to discourage voting?
I could go on forever, but if I had to choose one reform that would make the biggest difference in Harrisburg, it would be this: How about the legislative rules that allow powerful party bosses to bury bills — like the one that finally would have addressed that child sex abuse injustice — that have strong bipartisan support and/or passed in the other chamber?
We could ensure those bills can’t be buried in committee and blocked from a full vote, if rank and file legislators had the guts to defy their party bosses.
We have the power to change all this. If voters would hold their elected representatives to account for not being loud and persistent voices for reform, we could become a model for ethical, responsive government.Instead of a model for stupidity.
This is a contributed opinion column. Bill White can be reached at whitebil1974@gmail.com. His Threads handle is whitebil2000. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author, and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. Do you have a perspective to share? Learn more about how we handle guest opinion submissions at themorningcall.com/opinions.
