10/30/07 So Long Saylor: Vote "NO" on Supreme Court Justice Saylor (Daniel Hunter)

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So Long Saylor: Vote "NO" on Supreme Court Justice Saylor
By Daniel Hunter Tuesday, 10/30/07 (1193755365657)

The guy who stole your vote, does not deserve yours: On November 6th, vote NO on Justice Thomas G. Saylor

On November 6th, Casino-Free Philadelphia urges you to go to the polls and vote NO on Supreme Court Justice Thomas G. Saylor.

We take this extraordinary step because Justice Saylor supported the completely undemocratic manner in which casinos are being forced on to our city. His support for Act 71, passed in the middle of the night with no public scrutiny, opened the door for this casino debacle.

We urge you to vote NO to Justice Saylor because he failed to defend the rights of Philadelphia's citizens to vote on whether to allow casinos to be built right next to our neighborhoods. We demand his removal because Justice Saylor has shown utter disrespect for the Constitution of the Commonwealth and scorn for the voters.

SAYLOR AND GAMBLING

Any history of gambling in Pennsylvania starts with the passage of Act 71. This Act was pushed through by Senator Vince Fumo and Governor Ed Rendell in the middle of the night on the July 4th holiday in 2004. This act started off as a 33-line document about background checks at horse racetracks and sat in the House for 47 days before being passed to the Senate where it was abandoned for 100 days.

On July 1st, the act was transformed from a 33-line bill into a 145 page bill authorizing up to 61,000 slot machines in fourteen locations across the commonwealth. All 33-lines had been crossed out and the final bill had 0 words in common with the original document. The bill was then rushed through both the House and the Senate without public input and behind the backs of the voters.

This legislative duplicity violates at least three provision of the Pennsylvania constitution.

The "original purpose rule" says, "...no bill shall be so altered or amended, on its passage through either House, as to change its original purpose." That means that if a bill starts out to do one thing, you can't change it to do something else. Act 71 was passed through the General Assembly with none of its original language in clear violation of the "original purpose rule".
The "three-day rule" says, "Every bill shall be considered on three different days in each House." That's three different days in the House and three different days in the Senate. Act 71 didn't even come close to satisfying the necessary time for consideration. It was passed through the General Assembly in less than 30 hours.
The "single-subject rule" says, "No bill shall be passed containing more than one subject,..." If you have more than one subject, you need more than one bill. Act 31 didn't just legalize gambling, it also established new taxes, defined which courts had jurisdiction over controversies, created a whole new bureaucracy called the Gaming Control Board, allowed public officials to own 1% of slots licensees, and repealed local governments' authority to have a say on where slots parlors should be located. Though this last provision was later revoked, Act 71 clearly violates the single subject rule.

Tell your neighbors and friends: Print out this PDF document.

Yet Pennsylvania's Supreme Court -- including Justice Saylor -- rejected citizen challenges to the law. As a result, the provisions of our Constitution have been rendered unenforceable. These provisions date back to 1873 and were intended to prevent the exact abuses that the Supreme Court now condones.

Supreme Court Justice Saylor conspired to disenfranchise the public. He has never recanted and has never acted to undo his decision.

Send a message to the Supreme Court. Every Philadelphia voter should send the Supreme Court the message that such disrespect for our Constitution and for the principles of Democracy is unacceptable.

The entire Supreme Court has shown utter disrespect to the citizens of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia in particular.

Justice Castille remains the lone dissenter to the disrespect, as modeled when he called out the anti-democratic nature of the Supreme Court's ruling against the 1,500-foot ballot initative of Phillly voters:

"Aside from the fact that the people of Philadelphia had no opportunity to participate in a public debate on the specifics of the legislation ultimately adopted by the General Assembly, the people in the historic neighborhoods most affected by the approved casinos had a very limited say before the Board, which was charged only to abide by the Assembly's guidelines, and which went about its licensing duty with alacrity.... And so, the neighbors directly affected by the licensing decisions were successfully muzzled before the General Assembly, muted before the Board, and totally muzzled before this Court.
"The [Supreme Court Justice] Majority's notion that expressions of restraint and dissent have no role in democracy in Pennsylvania is a strange one, indeed... Today's decision represents a dramatic departure from this Court's respect for the democratic values underlying our system of government. Therefore, I am compelled to dissent."

That is dissenting. Saylor, despite some specific instances of disagreeing with the majority on gambling issues, has never risen to this level of dissenting. He has fundamentally sided with the right of the court to muzzle voters and this is unacceptable.

In the ballot question case, for example, he dissented -- but not because he thought voters should not be disenfranchised. He thought the Supreme Court was the wrong jurisdiction to make that decision. That kind of technical dissenting, used as political hackery, is unacceptable.

SAYLOR AND THE PAY RAISE

The movement to keep Casinos out of Philadelphia's neighborhoods has a lot in common with the pay raise movement. Both movements are fighting for greater transparency and openness in government. From the east to the west of Pennsylvania, the two movements unite under a theme of transparency.

The pay raise scandal is not about taking money -- it is about trusted officials exploiting taxpayers and abusing citizen trust for their own self-interests. In this regard, Saylor has never dissented and broken ranks with his Supreme Court justices.

In five short pages, Saylor agrees nearly completely with those upheld the pay raise. His only exception is that, in his view, judges' pay hikes could not legally be severed from the raises lawmakers awarded to themselves.

Once again, he uses technical grounds but refuses to defend the constitutional and judicial violations taking place.

SAYLOR'S MINI-SCANDALS

In 2005, it was revealed that Saylor was one of six justices who spent $164,000 in taxpayer money for expenses that included $1,766 to frame a picture and $85 for a bottle of wine. Over a six month period, Saylor billed taxpayers for 34 carwashes for his publicly supplied car. When Supreme Court justice Cappy tried to defend this theft of taxpayer's money as necessary to uphold the court's "high society" lifestyles, Legal Intelligencer columnist Howard Bashman wasn't buying it. Bashman felt this propensity to run up the public tab, by itself, was a good reason to vote NO on retention.

Saylor let voters down a second time in 2005, during a bizarre incident at Harrisburg International Airport. When initially searched, he was told he couldn't carry a small, Swiss-army style, knife onto the plane, but could store it with checked luggage. So what did he do? He hid the knife inside a shoe. For that little trick, he was ultimately fined $750 and named by TalkLeft as "Stupid Criminal of the Week."

CONCLUSION

There are other issues about Justice Thomas G. Saylor that concern people familiar with his legal decisions, including attempts to restrict free speech, expand state police power, and limit personal privacy.

But on the issues of casinos, he has clearly sided with the casinos and against the voters of Philadelphia. Saylor's political maneuverings within the court to sway and confuse voters on his record are not enough to undo the damage that has been done to the Constitution.

Unless Saylor comes out dissenting against a system that has abused us -- as modeled by his colleague Castille -- he remains an enabler.

We deserve better.

So long, Saylor.