And now, the Democrats' take on the pay raise

And now, the Democrats' take on the pay raise 9/17/2005, 11:11 a.m. ET By PETER JACKSON

The Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — More than two months after Pennsylvania's lawmakers gave themselves generous midterm pay raises, most of the folks back home are still angry about it. But will it matter a year from now, when most lawmakers are seeking re-election?

The responses of the Republican and Democratic parties may point to the answer.

At the Sept. 10 meeting of the Republican State Committee, House Speaker John M. Perzel shut down arguments for and against a resolution condemning the pay raise by paraphrasing Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment.

"Don't say bad things about other Republicans!" Perzel said.

Democrats are "cheerful and gleeful" over unrelenting criticism of the pay raise and "looking and trying to defeat us," he warned. "We need to stay together. We need to stay strong."

Ultimately, the GOP stayed together. There was no open discussion about the resolution calling on the Republican-controlled Legislature to repeal the raise. The only bad things said were said about Democrats. And committee members swiftly approved a watered-down statement expressing "great concern" about the handling of the raise but not urging any particular course of action.

Now it's the Democratic Party's turn to take — or not take — a symbolic stand on lawmakers' July 7 vote to fatten their paychecks by as much as 54 percent and allow themselves to collect the money more than a year early in spite of a constitutional ban.

At least one resolution calling for repeal is expected to surface when the Democratic State Committee meets in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24. It will be similar to a resolution adopted this week by the Armstrong County Democratic Committee that stresses the "embarrassment" that the pay-raise vote has caused the party at a time many Pennsylvanians are struggling to get by.

"I think that there's a general consensus among the members of the party — meaning the average voters — that (what) was done and how it was done were wrong," said Chuck Pascal, an Armstrong County lawyer leading the charge for a state committee vote.

Pascal was wrangling with party leaders over procedural issues last week, but Democratic State Chairman T.J. Rooney said he expects the state committee will debate the pay-raise issue.

"These people absolutely have a right to their opinion" and a right to make their case to the committee, he said.

Rooney is also a state representative from Northampton County who, like Perzel, voted for the pay raise and is accepting the money early through "unvouchered expenses,"

He believes that there's a good chance the state committee will approve a pro-repeal resolution. But he also is convinced that it would have little effect on what happens in the Legislature because citizens who are upset about the pay raise are not making distinctions between which legislators voted for it and which ones opposed it.

"It's a pox on everybody's house," he said. "The more this issue is played out the more it becomes a political liability" to all incumbent legislators.

An independent poll released last week seemed to support Rooney's skepticism.

The Keystone Poll showed 79 percent of Pennsylvania's voters feel that legislators did not deserve the raise, which pushed their base salary to $81,050 — No. 2 nationally — and 69 percent grade the Legislature's job performance as only fair or poor. But 64 percent of the respondents said they did not know whether their own representative or senator voted for the raise.

And "the only poll that matters," as politicians like to say — the next legislative election — is 14 long months away.

Peter Jackson is the Capitol correspondent for The Associated Press in Harrisburg. Copyright 2005

Source: http://www.pennlive.com/newsflash/pa/index.ssf?/base/news-30/1126970340272430.xml&storylist=penn

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