Dear Fellow Pennsylvanian:

Please write your state legislator NOW. Urge them to pass House Rules which guarantee that legislators know what they are voting on.

When our state House of Representatives gets down to business around 3 pm Monday, January 31, 2005, its first order of business will be to adopt a set of House Rules. Although arcane, to a large extent the House rules determine whether lawmaking in Pennsylvania is limited to the 5 or 6 persons in the House leadership or whether the 195 rank and file legislators who represent the majority of Pennsylvanians also have a say.

Under the old House Rules stealth legislation has multiplied like rats in a back alley. Philadelphians saw this first hand last November when a piece of stealth legislation authored by a lobbyist for the Billboard industry--House Bill 1954--took away their legal right as taxpayers to appeal zoning decisions.

State Representative Greg Vitali is attempting to shine a light into those dark corners of the Rules where rank and file legislators and the Pennsylvanians they represent have been bitten. Among other things Vitali's common-sense changes would require:

• Legislators have 24 hours instead of just a single hour to review bills such as HB 1954.
• A short summary of the Bill be read. As things are now, a bill number with no explanation whatsoever is sometimes all that legislators have to go on.
• Legislators be present in-person to vote and not be permitted to give their vote to leadership to vote for them.

Rules that require that legislators have enough time and information to know what they are voting on: hardly the stuff of revolutions. Yet leadership has yet to embrace rules that would allow legislators to effectively represent the people who elected them. Rather each session since 1999, leadership has passed a temporary muzzle rule which forbids legislators from offering amendments to the House Rules. End result: there is never any discussion of the Rules--after all what's the point of discussing something you can't change--and no improvements are ever made.

Thank you for considering my request. It is only the involvement of concerned citizens like yourself that will make our state legislature a better place. Our state legislators are in great need of your guidance and thoughtful concern.

Sincerely,

Ed Goppelt, webmaster@hallwatch.org

More Information

• Read letters others have written.
• Urge your legislator to support rules which end stealth legislation.