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ucreview.com •july 10, 2013 3
Tree days in June: How PA legis- lators fumbled governor’s agenda
By Eric Boehm, Melissa Daniels | PA Independent
H
ARRISBURG — It’s Friday night, a little after 8 p.m. in the state Cap- itol and Republican state senators have just emerged from a four-hour closed- door meeting on a bill to overhaul Pennsylvania’s state liquor laws. Nearby, in the rotunda that is usually darkened and empty by this hour, there is a buzz of activity. Lobbyists chat amongst themselves or speak in hushed tones to unknown interests on the other end of cell phone signals. Report- ers, meanwhile, mill around waiting for the Senate to reconvene.
It’s the end of the week and nearly the end of the fiscal year. But it’s the start of a furious three-day rush in which lawmakers hoped to pass a state budget, de- velop a plan to overhaul the odd and arcane laws regarding where and how alcohol can be purchased and a $2 billion transporta- tion infrastructure spending proposal.
The state Senate would have the first move, if only they could find the votes. That’s why they spent most of the afternoon and evening locked away in an enclave beneath the Senate chambers, hammering out an agreement that would move the liquor bill for- ward.
If they could do that, the state House could be convinced to advance the transportation plan that, if they were being honest, the senators were far more interested in having passed. With Democrats unani- mously opposed to the li- quor proposal, GOP leaders knew they needed to have 26 “yes” votes from their 27 members.
The connection between liquor privatization and transportation funding had been whispered about for months, but rarely acknowl- edged publicly — and never in a straightforward man- ner.
Interestingly enough, it
was Senate President Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, who denounced the connection in January, telling report- ers he did not want to see highway funding “held
seen,” said state Sen. Mike Brubaker, R-Lancaster, on Friday.
BEHIND THESE DOORS: Senate Republicans debated the merits of liquor privatization for hours on Friday – some were swayed to support the bill in hopes it would advance a transportation bill in the state House.
hostage” by Gov. Tom Cor- bett in order to get a liquor privatization bill finished. But behind those heavy mahogany doors, Senate Republicans were well aware of how the two bills’ fates were linked. A high- stakes game of legislative chicken was about to com- mence.
“I don’t know if its tied or not tied to passing liquor to the House, but I don’t know and I’m not going to take that chance,” said Sen. Don White, R-Indiana, who stepped out of the caucus room long enough to tell a gaggle of reporters he disliked the liquor bill, but was planning to vote for it anyway, just to compel the House to move transporta- tion forward.
By the time Senate Re- publican leaders talked all 27 of their members into supporting the liquor bill, it was clear White was not the only one that saw li- quor as the second half of a measure-for-measure deal with the House on transpor- tation funding. And there were still other holdouts to be dealt with. State Sen. Tommy Tom- linson, R-Bucks, said he was “a no vote” at 11:05 p.m. Friday, citing concerns about putting beer distribu- tors out of business. Two hours later, with language in the amendment to pro- hibit gas stations from sell- ing beer if they were near distributors, Tomlinson was on board.
The arm-twisting contin- ued long into the night. “There’s some very long term members here — 20-year-plus members — who say they’ve never seen the intensity inside of our caucus that they’ve
They needed 26. But when the time came, no one de- viated from the pack. The state Senate approved the rewrite of the liquor bill with a party-line 27-23 vote around 1:20 a.m. Saturday, setting up the package for a final vote before Sunday’s budget deadline. ‘Turzai’s got a problem’ That vote, as it would turn out, changed the entire dy- namic that would play out in the state Capitol for the rest of the weekend. Senate Republicans had put their chips on the table and made what was, for some, a dif- ficult vote. But before they were going to go any farther with the liquor bill, they waited to see the House GOP do the same with the Senate’s coveted transporta- tion funding package. Neither bill was what the other side really wanted. The House reduced the fi- nal spending figure for the transportation bill and the Senate had tinkered with several elements of the li- quor reform proposal. As Friday turned into Sat-
urday, it was increasingly clear neither would be fin- ished without the other. It was an arrangement that hinged on House Ma- jority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny. But Turzai had troubles of his own, and by Saturday afternoon they became quite obvious.
The two-term Republican majority leader had been the primary cheerleader for liquor privatization since 2011, when the GOP took control of the state House. But he was ruling over a fractured caucus that included a hard-line conservative wing dead-set against voting for tax in- creases to fund transporta- tion. Led by state Rep. Da- ryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, the most outspoken conserva- tive in the legislature, about 30 Republicans took a prin- cipled — some would say stubborn — stand against the transportation bill. Exiting a leadership meet- ing Saturday afternoon, state Rep. Robert Godshall, R-Montgomery, gave a frank description of the situation. “Turzai’s got a problem
because we have so many right-wingers, I mean real right-wingers, in our caucus who are opposed to every- thing,” he said.
Godshall, a self-described “moderate Republican”, said he was committed to supporting both transporta- tion and liquor, but many in the caucus did not see things the same way. “Mike is doing the best he can with what we have, but I’ve never seen anything like the divisions we have right now,” said Godshall, a 30-year member of the Leg- islature. ‘We’ve been ignored for three years’ From the beginning, both sides viewed transporta- tion as a bipartisan issue. The Corbett administra- tion had worked on a draft transportation package for months, then a more robust $2.5-billion proposal passed the state Senate 45-5 in early June. Secretary of Transpor- tation Barry Schoch made personal visits for the past several months to Demo- crats and Republicans to sell them on the transportation package. But now, without a unified Republican caucus, Turzai had to appeal to Democrats for support on the transpor- tation bill.
When it came time to count the votes, the House Democrats pushed back. They said the final bill came up short on spending, leav- ing out necessary funds and mass-transit support. State Rep. Mike Hanna, D-Centre, said without Democrats having their hands in crafting the actual plan, the Republicans had the responsibility to put up the majority of votes. As Re- publican support fractured, Democrat votes become more crucial.
First Democrats were asked to put up 30 to 40 votes. Then 50. Then 60.
Hanna said it just couldn’t happen, not when the cau- cus says the administration hasn’t heard them out on their priorities. “We’ve been ignored for
three years,” Hanna said. “Now they’re coming to us and saying ‘Here’s a trans- portation bill and you have to pass it.’” On Saturday afternoon, Hanna and Rep. Dan Fran- kel, D-Allegheny, met with Turzai to bring up their transportation amendment, Hanna said. The plan was “essentially rejected.” But it included a severance tax on shale drilling companies
TERRY SHOCKLEY, the Executive Director for
the CEC, is the guest on this week’s UC Review Community News Hour. Shockley will discuss the organization’s commitment to “Dance for Africa”. Shockley will also discuss the struggling state of the arts and the reduced support to the arts from foundations. So make sure to join co-hosts Bob Christian and Nicole Contosta this Thursday, July 11th on WPEB, 88.1 FM from 8-9 a.m.
The interview portion of the show is later rebroadcast on
www.ucreview.com.
to help fund mass transit, a nonstarter in a Republican caucus that’s staunchly op- poses raising taxes, let alone creating new ones. With the transportation deal crumbling like frac- tured concrete on Saturday night, the finger-pointing started.
State Rep. Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery, hammered Democratic leaders for backing away from the table at the last minute and stranding the transportation plan more than 30 votes shy of passage. “They’re not paid to think,” Vereb said. Democrats, already un- happy with the way they had been treated, were less than receptive to being pub- licly insulted.
Neither Senate Demo- crats nor the labor unions, two groups that favored the transportation bill, made much of an effort to rally support from House Democrats. Another union actively began working against the transportation bill in the House, hoping to kill the liquor bill through the backdoor. After Friday’s high-water mark for liquor privatization in the state Senate, Saturday night ended with hopes dimming on all sides.
‘It feels a little bit like bizarro world’
On Sunday morning, with Democrats still unified in opposition to the trans- portation plan, state Rep. Brian Sims, D-Philadelphia, found a little bit of humor
continued on page 11
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