Today I attended a public hearing held by the Senate State Government Committee to hear public opinion about the possibility of convening a new Constitutional Convention to address issues such as legislature pay raises, term limits, general assembly size, voter referendum, and the powers of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Senators in attendance are as follows:
Senator Jeffery Piccola (R) - District 15 - Committee Chair
Senator Mike Folmer (R) - District 48 - Committee Vice Chair
Senator Jake Corman (R) - District 34
Senator Wayne Fontana (D) - District 42
Senator Jim Ferlo (D) - District 38
PCN was in attendance, so keep an eye out for the broadcast. Details of the proceedings were nicely provided in the form of two different proposed acts for convening a Constitutional Convention and the written testimonies of the witnesses (these are identical to the spoken testimonies). I have organized the provided written material into a PDF for anyone who wants to know exactly what was said:
http://www.pitt.edu/~wdw5/Senate_Committee_Hearing_Reguarding_a_Constitutional_Convention.pdf
Some notes that might not be entirely clear from the raw written
material in the PDF:
- It appears that there is universal agreement that should a new CC convene, it should be limited to addressing specific articles of the PA Constitution and by no means should include any of Article I
- It is planned that at least two more similar hearings will be held. I have not heard if there are any details as to the date and location.
- Senator Piccola opposes current legislators being permitted to run for a position as a delegate on the CC. However, he appeared willing to reconsider after hearing from Lisa Krebs from the ACLU.
- Senator Piccola wants to encourage the public to contact him about their own opinions regarding convening a new CC.
In response to the testimony of Dr. Jake Haulk:
- Senators Ferlo and Corman both question the need to address term limits.
- Senator Fontana argues against voter referendum noting that it is almost never used in Allegheny County. It should also be noted that voter referendum in Allegheny County is different than what is being proposed and does not directly put legislation on the ballot.
- Senator Piccola expressed his view that either term limits OR referendums need to exist, but not both at the same time.
- In response to Haulk's closing, Piccola dismissed the notion of not allowing the Supreme Court to have power to over turn amendments made in a CC.
In response to the testimonies of Bruce Ledewitz and Dr. Joel Fishman:
- There appeared to be careful agreement that a very large part of the problem is the over reaching power of the PA Supreme Court resulting from an amendment to Article V that was performed in the 1968 CC. The end result is that the Supreme Court has the final say over the General Assembly.
Now for the slightly more pressing issue at hand. It is not at all certain yet as to whether the State Government Committee will even go forward with trying to convene a constitutional convention. However, given that both proposed pieces of legislation have very tight time requirements for petition signatures to get on the ballot to be a CC delegate, we should be prepared to mobilize. One does not discriminate by party lines and simply requires 500 signatures from the Senatorial district in which you are running. The other allows each political party to nominate two candidates per Senatorial district and allows for political bodies to nominate by requiring 500 petition signatures in similar fashion to the other proposed bill. There is no differing between minor and major political parties in either bill, but I would guess that this fact will be ignored or changed and Political Party will be taken to mean Major Political Party. So either way, we will probably need to be prepared to collect at least 500 valid signatures in each Senatorial district in a time span of about three weeks.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Running Mate on the hearing about a possible PA Constitutional Convention
Fellow Libertarian, David Weiser, reported in an email:
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3 comments:
From email
There is some interest in a constitutional convention for our legislative branch in Harrisburg. I believe there was a public hearing at the Duquesne Law School just recently on this subject.
Instead of a full blown convention opening up Pandora's box, maybe a limited convention is the way to go?
My initial reaction regarding the legislature is to change the structure and rules on: a.) how we elect b.) how many we need c.) how much we compensate.
If the convention was limited to this confined area of discussion maybe we improve the system.
I would be very much opposed to a convention rewriting tax law, creating authorities, or passing
pet projects like helmet laws, abortion, hunting seasons, super majority to pass a tax, etc.
I came up with 12 topics for a limited convention.
1.) Eliminate pensions.
2.) Eliminate health benefits.
3.) Reduce salary to around $10,000 per year and end all other perks.
4.) Any future increase in compensation should be put to a state wide referendum.
5.) Eliminate Primaries at tax payer expense. Have each political party hold their own primary and fund it. At the very least have an open primary.
6.) Eliminate the bicameral system for a unicameral system.
7.) Increase the size of the new legislature (at the reduced cost) to around 800 or more.
8.) Reduce petition signature requirements to 60 for legislator and 600 for state wide. 3rd Parties should not have ridiculous requirements but exactly the same.
9.) Redistricting should be decided by juries of 12 non-voters. The goal should be spatial conformity and equal populations.
10.) Elections should be conducted with a verified paper trail.
11.) Election day should be election week. Maybe 5pm-9pm for 3-4 days and all day on Saturday.
12.) All elections in the Commonwealth should be instant runoff voting (IRV).
13.) Conduct public hearings in the evening and on cable/internet.
I believe these action items are neutral and all of this should be passed between 2am-3am.
Ron Rosenberger
comprehensive report on this hearing a few weeks back. See the following file for the full proceedings:
http://www.pitt.edu/~wdw5/Senate_Committee_Hearing_Reguarding_a_Constitutional_Convention.pdf
There are some very specific issues that the Senators are looking to address. Ballot access is not among them and I believe that we should not waste our time an energy on trying to add it as an issue but instead push our efforts into making real influence (perhaps by trying to get delegates elected) in those areas that will be covered if a Constitutional Convention is convened.
Originally I was a supporter of the move to hold a CC. However, if you examine the specific sections that they would like to address, you will find that most of them have little to do with the problem at hand and could open up a Pandora's box that could have remained closed with little harm. The ultimate concern and cause of most of the problem seems to be the over reaching power of the PA Supreme Court that was granted to them accidentally in the last PA CC. You can see this in that when the Assembly tried to overturn the pay raise, the Supreme Court ruled that it was a constitutional pay raise AFTER it had been overturned. But by some poorly interpreted section of the PA Constitution, the Supreme Court was then able to nullify the overturning of the pay raise. Given that, and given the direct interest the General Assembly would have in passing an amendment themselves to resolve this, I think that they should just fix this one area in the traditional way and be done with it.
-David Weiser-
Great start Ron.
My comments within your statements:
>
> My initial reaction regarding the legislature is to change the structure and rules on: a.) how we elect b.) how many we need c.) how much we compensate.
Hope staffing is within the compensation part. Staffing should not be controlled by the parties.
Hope there is something like "read the bills" act in there too. See
DownsizeDC for specifics.
> 2.) Eliminate health benefits.
> 3.) Reduce salary to around $10,000 per year and end all other perks.
What about executive branch?
What about judicial branch?
Perhaps there is a bit in there about how much we choose to pay to run the government.
Perhaps (wild suggestion) tie all the expenses of the government
administration -- staff, costs, compensation, expenses of heating the Capital Building -- to an index. That index might be, for example, no greater than 15% of the PA Lottery profits from the prior year. I don't even have a clue as to how much that would be. But, it would be interesting to figure out.
> 4.) Any future increase in compensation should be put to a state wide referendum.
State-wide referendums should be a tool of the citizens. We'll ask the
questions from time to time.
> 5.) Eliminate Primaries at tax payer expense. Have each political party hold their own primary and fund it. At the very least have an open primary.
Consider the timing of elections. To vote in Feb 2008 could be a
serious problem.
Eliminate special elections on their own date. When people leave a
seat open, often for another job, then that seat stays open until the
next election.
> 7.) Increase the size of the new legislature (at the reduced cost) to around 800 or more.
I do like this.
> 9.) Redistricting should be decided by juries of 12 non-voters. The goal should be spatial conformity and equal populations.
Redistricting could also be done with a math formula as well. The
total distance of the borders of a district should not increase by
certain factors. I'd love to have an academic team, open source
software (ish) -- come up with competing forumlas. Then the people
vote for them.
> 13.) Conduct public hearings in the evening and on cable/internet.
More than just public hearing. Allow for all meetings to be put on the net, in real time even.
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