Pa. lawmakers float ideas for new laws
Power struggle in House muddles route to passage for nearly 200 suggestions
HARRISBURG — State lawmakers, most of them fresh off election victories, have unleashed a flood of 197 ideas for new laws, but an ongoing power struggle in the House may complicate their path to becoming actual legislation.
Among the ideas is a proposal laying out how to spend $100 million on mental health needs. Others involve increasing income limits for a state property tax and rent rebate program, getting rid of the licenseto-carry permit system for carrying concealed weapons, and doubling the notice hospitals need to give before they close for good.
The mental health proposal belongs to Lehigh County Democratic Rep. Mike Schlossberg, who cited statistics showing five Pennsylvanians take their own lives every day. Schlossberg’s memo follows up on recommendations from a committee that studied how to spend $100 million of COVID relief money on mental health needs.
“We need to finalize the appropriation of that $100 million,” he said.
The ideas came in the form of written memos to fellow lawmakers. Typically, only some become bills, and only a minority of those make it through the entire process to become laws.
But any bill must pass through the House before becoming law, and leadership of the state House remains in dispute.
The aftermath of a razorclose Nov. 8 election makes it tough to predict who will run the chamber when members reconvene for the first in-person session Jan. 3.
“I hope we can resolve this and get to work,” Schlossberg said.
A spokesperson for House Republicans, Jason Gottesman, said there is precedent for “very close majorities” working things out in a way that allows lawmaking to move forward.
Technically, lawmakers’ first day of work in the new, two-year session was Thursday. All House members and half of senators were fresh off November election victories.
On their first day, they generated 197 co-sponsor memos — far more than the dozen or fewer that reach the memo inbox on a typical day.
Many are refilings of ideas that failed to get through in previous sessions. Here is a sampling:
Property tax and rent:
Republican Rep. Jack Rader of Monroe County
outpace more secular holiday celebrants in getting into the spirit, though the Advent spirit is a slightly different thing. It’s a time of joyful expectation, but also penitence, a time to turn away from worldly distractions, shopping included, and focus the heart on eternity.
But that’s a bit of heavy sledding for our purposes here. Let’s look instead at the next step in the evolution of Christmas feeling — the date people in each state stop giving a figgy pudding about work because it’s holiday time.
This is according to Mixbook, a photo book company that conducted its own 3,000-person survey to pinpoint the — ahem — advent of Christmas fever, when employees start to mentally clock out and grow less productive.
“But that’s all year,” the boss chuckles.
Good one, boss. But the survey says Dec. 14 for Pennsylvanians.
“It appears the excitement of festive get-togethers with friends and family, and the preoccupation with all the associated tasks, such as Christmas shopping, totally take over their minds,” Mixbook says.
Idahoans evidently succumb to this feeling earliest, on Dec. 7. But the workers of New Hampshire, where the state motto is “live free or die,” keep themselves as busy as Santa’s elves until Dec. 21. Other findings: More than half of workers say their strained relationships with certain co-workers improve at holiday time. Happy hour moves up from 5 p.m. or so to the oddly precise time of 2:42 p.m. And 18% of workers admit to having a drink before lunchtime.
Well, it isn’t the 14th yet,
reader. Back to work.