Perzel buries raise repeal bills

Perzel buries raise repeal bills

By Brad Bumsted

STATE CAPITOL REPORTER

Thursday, September 29, 2005

HARRISBURG – It's time for lawmakers who voted against pay raises to demand that their leaders repeal the salary grab following a death stroke dealt to two repeal-related bills by House Speaker John Perzel, a former top Republican staffer says.

Bill Williams, former communications director for House Republicans, said legislative opponents of the 16 to 54 percent pay hike need to “stand up and publicly challenge leadership."

Perzel's spokeswoman Beth Williams confirmed Wednesday that the speaker assigned the two bills to the leadership-controlled Rules Committee, which serves as a graveyard for legislation House leaders want to kill.

Perzel did so on Tuesday, just a day after approximately 1,500 angry taxpayers at the state Capitol demanded repeal of the pay hike, according to the General Assembly's Web site. Petitions with 129,000 signatures demanding repeal were presented to Perzel, Gov. Ed Rendell and Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jubelirer, R-Altoona, on Monday.

One bill (H.B. 1945) would repeal the raises that were approved without debate or public comment in the early morning hours of July 7. The other bill (H.B. 1956) would repeal a provision that allows lawmakers to take the raises this term, as about half of the legislators are doing.

Perzel's action "is a clear signal that they (the bills) are dead," said G. Terry Madonna, political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster County, a longtime legislative observer.

Beth Williams denied that Perzel is killing the bills, saying the House will consider them if a majority, 102 of 203 members, say they want to vote on them. "Nope, it's not killing it," she said.

Getting 102 members to do so isn’t likely, Bill Williams said.

Rep. Paul Clymer, R-Bucks County, chairman of the State Government Committee, where the bills would normally be assigned, said Perzel's action decreases chances they will ever see the light of day.

Clymer said if the bills had been assigned to his committee, he would have held public hearings and would have brought them to a vote.

The speaker’s action "means leadership has taken control of (the bills),” said Bill Williams, the former staffer who now is an author of Civil War books. “They are probably not going to report this out (of the Rules Committee). I kind of thought this would happen."

There's still a chance that a legislator could attempt to offer the substance of the bills as amendments to other bills on the House floor, Madonna said. But leaders most likely would use parliamentary tactics to prevent that, he said.

So far, no repeal bills have been filed in the Senate.

Brad Bumsted can be reached at bbumsted@tribweb.com or (717) 787-1405.

Source: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/pmupdate/s_379089.html

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