After 100 days in office, state Rep. Jim Marshall said a number of things about Harrisburg still amazed him.
One is a warped sense of time.
State Rep. Jim Marshall talks about what political analysts were saying about his chances of being elected.
Rep. Marshall said he was surprised to find so many good legislators.
Rep. Marshall learned the purpose of non-voting sessions.
Rep. Marshall discusses businesses, taxes and the environment.
"I'm still getting accustomed to the speed with which some decisions get made," he said. Other things move with glacial slowness. When he proposed a rule change to end legislative sessions at 11 p.m., senior legislators complained that they would get nothing done.
"I said, 'Well, if you'd start when you say you're going to start, it wouldn't be a problem,' " said Mr. Marshall, a Republican from Big Beaver, noting that scheduled 11 a.m. start times often get pushed back to 2 p.m.
In a way, though, the biggest surprise for him has been a positive one. "The first thing that really hit me is -- and this is gospel -- there are more good legislators there than bad," he said. "That surprised me, and I guess it's a shame that it surprised me.
"The perception is that there's a bunch of money-hungry, self-centered, egotistical kingpins up there, and that's not the case at all. Just one or two that we knew about."
Mr. Marshall, a former service worker, made headlines in November when he knocked off Mike Veon, a 22-year legislative veteran who was one of Harrisburg's most powerful lawmakers through his position as Democratic whip. He was a staunch Democrat in a staunchly Democratic district.
But Mr. Veon helped engineer the legislative pay raise of 2005, a middle-of-the-night vote that enraged voters, and was the only legislator who voted against a bill to rescind the raise.
"The political analysts said no one could beat Mike Veon before I did," Mr. Marshall said, "and then, immediately afterward, said he was so vulnerable that anyone could have beaten Mike Veon."
Mr. Marshall went to Harrisburg, then, as a complete political ingenue carrying the reform flag, and as a legislator acutely aware that the Democratic machinery in his district could pluck him right back out of office again in two years.
He found himself in good company. The pay raise spurred a number of upsets, leading to a large, empowered, reform-minded freshman class.
With the leadership spooked by the elections, Mr. Marshall helped engineer two reforms: The 11 p.m. curfew for legislative sections and a required 24-hour period between the time bills are amended and the time they are approved.
Both are intended to keep lawmakers from slipping legislation through with little notice. Many unpopular laws, including the pay raise, have been enacted late at night through 11th-hour amendments tacked onto existing bills, giving the public little chance to weigh in.
He also helped pass a ban on smoking, which turned the literal fumes into figurative fuming.
"People said, 'How can you do that?' I said, 'It's a majority, that's how,' " he said.
Bill Wade, Post-GazetteState Rep. Jim Marshall in front of the Beaver Falls Fire Department. He is a volunteer fireman in Big Beaver.
Click photo for larger image.
Mr. Marshall said he would love to keep the reform train rolling. He'd like to stop providing cars to legislators. He'd like to revise the health-care plan so that representatives have to contribute. He'd like to see any pensions be 100 percent legislator-funded, basically, whatever individual lawmakers choose to put from their salaries into retirement plans.
"When you start to take away the nontypical benefits, like free health care and giant-size pensions ... the people that aren't there to represent the people will say, 'I could make more in the private sector,' " he said.
Mr. Marshall waffles a bit now when it comes to reducing the size of the Legislature itself, however. A former borough councilman, he likes the local-politics feel of having a constituency of about 60,000.
Still, he co-sponsored a bill calling for 40 senators and 100 representatives, and "I would vote for it, even if it cost me my seat," he said.
Beyond the reform movement, Mr. Marshall's 100 days in Harrisburg have left him more convinced than ever that the way to revitalize communities in the district is by encouraging business, achieved by cutting the corporate income tax and looking to streamline regulations.
"It's the businesses that create jobs," he said. "It's not the government that creates jobs. Government's got to stay out of people's way."
The role he does see for government is in bolstering the infrastructure that business needs, including finding a fix for the region's failing sewer systems.
He sees a huge need in an area recently highlighted by U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-McCandless: The aging, undersize and, in some places, damaged locks that carry barges around Ohio River dams in the region.
Those locks, of course, once served a booming steel industry, an industry that pretty much built Beaver County. And their state of neglect mirrors the decline of the steel industry, which was crushed by foreign competition in the 1980s.
But the river hasn't gone anywhere.
"It wasn't the government that brought those [steel] companies here," Mr. Marshall said. "It was the river. The river will bring them back."
Will he be in office long enough to tackle such a huge project?
"If people in the district support me and like what I've done, then I hope they vote for me," he said. "If they don't, they'll vote for some other guy.
"I expect a lot of competition."
First Published: April 19, 2007, 10:00 a.m.
