Lawmakers betray public with secrecy

Pennsylvania’s bloated House and Senate has 253 lawmakers making between $88,610 and $138,327 a year, plus perks and benefits, with thousands of staffers at their disposal.

Even with all the resources at its disposal at an annual price tag of roughly $360 milion, the General Assembly has been declining in productivity when it comes to enacting meaningful legislation.

Considering all this, one would think legislative leaders would be forthcoming regarding how its money is being spent. The people footing the bill might like to know. But that is hardly the case.

While the Legislature is not subject to most of the transparency laws that relate to local government, it is supposed to make its financial records public. Yet when a pair of news organizations requested records relating to legislative spending, the House and Senate turned over documents that were redacted so heavily that it was impossible to get a clear understanding of the purpose behind the listed expenditures. The redactions primarily concealed with whom legislators were meeting, and why.

Legislative officials said the information was kept secret based on “legislative privilege,” an obscure clause in the state constitution that they said protects lawmakers’ ability to speak and debate without retribution.

This is deeply wrong.

For one thing, it is not in lawmakers’ interests to keep this information secret. Just look at some of the material that was initially redacted but later made public. A great example relates to two breakfast meetings totaling $1,623 that outgoing House Speaker Mike Turzai held last year. The unredacted records revealed that the speaker had met with Eagle Scouts.

Keeping information on government spending secret only leads people to think the worst, especially in this era of conspiracy theories and general deep suspicion of political leaders. It also further erodes public trust in government, which Pennsylvania can hardly afford. And if lawmakers really do have something to hide, that’s an even bigger problem.

We have serious doubts that the framers of Pennsylvania’s constitution intended the clause in question to be an excuse for hiding relevant information from taxpayers. The point of it, according to good-government advocates, was to allow lawmakers to speak freely in official proceedings.

Read the text of the clause and it seems clear enough: “The members of the General Assembly,” it states, “shall in all cases, except treason, felony, violation of their oath of office, and breach or surety of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the sessions of their respective Houses and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House they shall not be questioned in any other place.”

We understand the need to protect personal information such as bank account numbers and home addresses. But we object to blacking out information about meetings lawmakers and staff spent money to conduct. Constituents have a right to know with whom their legislators are meeting, and why.

David Cuillier, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Arizona and president of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, offered an excellent analysis of the situation in Spotlight PA’s report on this situation: “They (lawmakers) need to buck up, have some backbone, and be accountable.”

We couldn’t agree more, and we congratulate our colleagues at Spotlight PA and The Caucus for pushing to get this information out to the public.