Let’s be clear.
We have a legislature in which lawmakers routinely:
- Use tax dollars to subsidize political campaigns
- Enact major laws in secret (the budget, the pay raise, the gambling law, to name just three) or with minimal public knowledge
- Increase their own slush funds while raising taxes, fees and debt for the rest of us
- Expand their own perks and benefits that most people can only dream of (and cannot afford, but must pay for)
- Dismantle democracy with gerrymandering that effectively rigs elections while making it harder and harder for the public to participate, but when they try to they must rely on voting machines that may or may not record their votes accurately (if at all)
We have an executive who:
- Has given more than $1 billion in no-bid contracts to businesses and lawyers, many of whom just happen to be pals or campaign contributors
- Makes secret commitments of public funds to favored interests
- Caves in to the General Assembly on matters of integrity (did I mention the pay raise?) as a quid pro quo for deals that may or may not be revealed to the public
- Violates the intent of the separation of powers by giving lawmakers the power to decide how more than $600 million in so-called “walking around money” is spent and keeping the records of those decisions secret
We have a supreme court in which:
- Ideas for improvement are not just unwelcome but treated as treasonous
- Specious legal arguments misrepresent the law in order to put more money in judges’ pockets and curry favor with lawmakers
- Justices consistently refuse to hold the General Assembly accountable for conspicuous violations of the Constitution, thereby refusing to protect Pennsylvanians from rampant wrongdoing
- Nothing is wrong with private meetings between justices and other political leaders on routine matters of governance that should be discussed and decided on the public record
- Judicial elections are compromised by discouraging candidates from discussing important legal issues with voters
Have you had enough of what is probably the most corrupt state government in America? One in which the highest value of the political class is having the job, not doing the job? One that treats citizens as walking wallets and the political class as public masters rather than public servants?
So have I.
When the government cannot or will not reform itself, we have to do it ourselves. We must insist on Pennsylvania’s first comprehensive constitutional convention in 135 years. Only at such a sober occasion can citizens debate and decide how to re-invent our government without touching the parts of the Constitution that guarantee our basic rights as citizens.
Even before the most recent scandals, opinion polls revealed a clear majority of us — 55 percent — understand that Pennsylvania needs a constitutional convention. Our current public officials have proved that they cannot stop the perks, stop the wasteful spending, stop the self-dealing and nepotism, stop tilting the playing field in favor of incumbents in elections and stop the insider trading of government contracts and grants for lobbyists and campaign contributors. For starters.
But a constitutional convention isn’t just about stopping and preventing corruption. It is also about starting us down the path we choose.
It is about creating the relationship we want between people and their government. It is about conveying power to, and withholding power from, those who take an oath to serve the public.
Our Constitution is very clear: People do not need the permission of their government to change their government. But it is entirely possible that lawmakers will stonewall a convention, hoping citizens will give up the fight.
It’s the strategy they used after the pay raise: “Deny, delay and deflect.” Deny that there’s a problem. When denial doesn’t work, delay doing anything about the problem. And when the public tires of delay, deflect its attention onto hot-button issues to extend the delay, preferably forever.
The pay raise is past, yielding to an entirely new set of scandals. Will we allow our lawmakers to steal another opportunity from us to achieve the highest, not the lowest, standards of public integrity in America? Or will we hold them accountable — each and every one of them — for authorizing a constitutional convention?
Whatever path we take at this political crossroads will make history. It will determine whether our future looks like our present, or whether our future is vastly better.
We know what we have to do. Let’s roll up our sleeves and reclaim our government.
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Tim Potts is co-founder of Democracy Rising Pennsylvania [1], a nonprofit, nonpartisan group working for integrity, value, transparency and citizen confidence in state government.