Another state 'reformer' has seen enough, won't seek re-election
Share with others:
HARRISBURG -- The General Assembly's so-called "reform" class of November 2006 is losing another member.
State Rep. Barbara McIlvaine Smith, a West Chester Democrat who's halfway through her second two-year House term, has decided not to seek re-election next year and will leave the Legislature when her current term expires in late 2010.
She will be following in the footsteps of Pittsburgh attorney Lisa Bennington, a Democrat who also was elected in November 2006 -- after months of public furor over the later-rescinded legislative pay raise of 2005. Ms. Bennington decided after the 2007-08 term that life at the state Capitol wasn't for her and returned to her practice of family law in December 2008.
At least in part due to longtime Democratic Rep. Frank Pistella's vote for the pay raise in July 2005, Ms. Bennington defeated him in the May 2006 House primary. But she quickly tired of the atmosphere in Harrisburg, where making changes with entrenched leaders and longtime procedures is difficult.
Ms. Bennington told the Post-Gazette in early 2008 that one of her frustrations was the large size of the Legislature -- which has 203 House members and 50 senators -- and the resulting difficulty of getting anything done.
"Until you reduce the size of the Legislature and you make the impact of one vote count, I don't know that one person will make an appreciable difference," she said.
The 50 freshmen in the legislative class of 2007-08 came in with high hopes of making change, but haven't been able to do much about reducing the size of the Legislature, limiting the number of terms a lawmaker can serve, putting the brakes on lawmakers' salary increases or other improvements that they say many constituents want.
Gender also may have something to do with the frustration of female lawmakers. For years, House and Senate leaders of both parties have been men, and they've spent years building up seniority and power, so they're reluctant to let go. Pennsylvania ranks near the bottom of the 50 states in its number of women lawmakers.
Ms. McIlvaine Smith recently expressed frustration that no action has been taken on her bill, introduced a year ago, to scrap the automatic Cost-of-Living Adjustments that lawmakers have given themselves every Dec. 1 since 1996 -- that is, until this year. She said she got considerable criticism from members on both sides of the aisle for trying to stop their regular pay raises.
State lawmakers will not get a cost-of-living increase this Dec. 1, but only because the COLA rate is based on the increase in the Consumer Price Index in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. And for the first time in years, that declined over the past 12 months due to the ongoing recession. Lawmakers don't get a pay decrease when the inflation rate drops, and the rank-and-file legislator's pay will stay at $78,300.
Ms. McIlvaine Smith said she also would like to see a smaller Legislature. But since there is a desire for the status quo in the Legislature, she doesn't see reform coming from within. She sees it happening only if a constitutional convention is held in 2011, for the first time since 1968.
Ms. McIlvaine Smith won a narrow victory in November 2006, and that win gave Democrats a one-vote margin (102-101) and control of the House for the first time in 12 years. When she took office in January 2007, she said there were dozens of other newly elected freshman idealists.
But General Assembly leaders eventually "pulled them in," she told her local West Chester newspaper. "I can't tell you how many times I've heard, 'We don't want to hear any more about reform. We're done with reform.' You can't get things done unless you have agreement from the leadership."
Brett Marcy, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Todd Eachus, D-Luzerne, said his boss "respects Rep. McIlvaine Smith immensely and wishes her well in her future endeavors. He had hoped she would continue to serve in the House as a passionate voice for good government in Harrisburg."
Mr. Eachus does, however, see progress on the reform front. "House Democrats have led the way over the past few years for meaningful reforms," Mr. Marcy said, such as House rules that have been changed to permit "greater accountability and transparency."
Votes on important subjects, such as legalizing casinos in July 2004 and enacting the pay raise in July 2005, were often taken in the middle of the night in the past, but that has been stopped now. The House has a rule to adjourn by 11 p.m. and usually doesn't go that late.
Also, Mr. Marcy said, "We strengthened the state's Right To Know Law and increased access to public records for the press and public. House Democrats will continue to improve the way Harrisburg operates."
But political activist Tim Potts, a leader of Democracy Rising PA, has many of the same complaints that Ms. McIlvaine Smith has about how the Legislature works. He also is working toward convening a constitutional convention in 2011, but first the Legislature has to authorize a November 2010 referendum on that subject.
"If we were going to have significant reforms following the pay raise of 2005, they would have happened by now," he said. "That's why we are putting all our energy into getting a referendum in November 2010 that allows citizens to decide whether there will be a constitutional convention in 2011."
First Published November 30, 2009 12:00 am
