The news is coming at you fast and furious of late, so there’s a lot that naturally slips by. For example: On the national stage, you might have missed that the Trump administration is planning a “big military parade” in Washington, D.C. on the president’s 79th birthday, to also mark the 250th anniversary of the United States Army. That’s right: Tanks in the streets honoring Dear Leader.
Closer to home, maybe you were unaware that there was a press conference last week — described by the Penn Capital-Star as “sparsely attended” — to mark yet another attempt to grapple with the corrupt state of our Commonwealth’s politics.
Listen to the audio edition here:
For the 38th time in the last 25 years, a bill banning gifts to members of the legislature has been proposed. None of the previous attempts have resulted in an actual vote on the floor. Why? Precisely because leaders know that it would pass.
“This is the lucky 38,” Democratic State Representative Jared Solomon joked when I caught up with him this week. Solomon is a co-sponsor of the bill, along with Republican State Representative Jim Rigby of Cambria, a former chief of police and volunteer fireman who Solomon describes as a “courageous straight-shooter.” My brethren in the media may not have turned out en masse for their press conference, but Solomon and Rigby are — bless their hearts — hopeful.
“There is a chasm between what the legislature passes and what the people want,” Solomon told me. “If this came to a vote on the floor, who would be against it? Anyone in Pennsylvania? Anyone in the universe? I want to find the one person who says we should be allowed to accept $1 million vacation homes. Find me that person.”
Like being on the payroll of those they’re supposed to regulate
Some context: Pennsylvania is the wild west when it comes to governing our politics. There are no limits on campaign fundraising. Members of our full-time legislature can hold outside jobs. (A member once told me she never knows who she’s negotiating with — a colleague who represents voters or a law firm partner who is a de facto lobbyist within the legislative body itself?) Committee chairs can essentially be on the payroll of those they’re supposed to regulate. Despite being among the nation’s highest paid legislatures, members can claim per diems — flat-rate payments with no paper trail when they travel outside their district. And, perhaps worst of all, there is no ban on the gifts a member can accept; we’re one of only 10 states that allows its elected representatives to get for themselves all that they can.
Think of it: You get pulled over by a cop, and it’s illegal for you to “gift” the officer a twenty spot. During a parent/teacher conference, you’d be run out of the school if you offered a bribe to your kid’s teacher. Why this exception for your elected official? And what about disclosure rules? Well, they exist, but they’re notoriously lax.
Rabbi Michael Pollack, who heads March on Harrisburg, a nonviolent activist group seeking to eradicate corruption in Pennsylvania, says there’s a huge divide between what lobbyists report giving as gifts to state legislators — unitemized and with no receipts — and the meager amount legislators actually report. The penalties for not reporting are near non-existent.
“I want to find the one person who says we should be allowed to accept $1 million vacation homes. Find me that person.” — Rep. Jared Solomon
Bottom line: To regulate such behavior requires a legislature willing to reform itself. Reformers like Solomon argue that that’s a prescription for just more status quo. However: the reason Solomon and Rigby — again, bless their tilting at windmill hearts — are hopeful this time around is that their bill is laden with exceptions and thereby mostly applies to the most egregious examples of gift-giving, what’s become known as the “Mercedes Rule”: The luxury car lease, the vacation home, the pricey Super Bowl tickets.
Opponents say no one is actually hitting these lotteries at taxpayer expense, so why bother outlawing them? The sponsors say if no one’s benefitting from the loophole, why not close it just to be safe? After all, at a time of rising populist anti-government sentiment, being pro-gift ban ought to be seen as smart politics.
But it’s still an uphill climb. Rabbi Pollack says there’s a whole culture smart reform politics needs to counter. In ’22, Pollack reports that a gift ban proposal finally emerged from the House state government committee — but “Oh God, the leadership in both parties and both chambers just knifed it in the shadows” before it made its way to the floor.
Getting anything done on political reform in Harrisburg requires the action of six people: The respective chairs of the state government committees in both bodies; in the House, Democratic Representative Carol Hill-Evans is on board. But public holdouts to date include Speaker of the House Democrat Joanna McClinton; House Majority Leader Matt Bradford; Senate President Pro Tempore Republican Kim Ward; Senate Majority Leader Joe Pitman; and Senate State Government Committee Chair Republican Cris Dush. Many rank and file members are privately supportive, but without leadership they have little leverage to force a vote.
Rabbi Pollack is not necessarily popular with said leadership. For seven years now, he’s been railing against the legalized bribery in our system and getting himself arrested some 20 times, influenced by King and Gandhi-like nonviolent civil disobedience. He’s motivated by a fierce commitment to justice, rooted in his faith. “The Bible really frames corruption for me,” he told me. “It’s the thing that keeps us from seeing each other honestly. In Exodus, it says ‘Do not take a bribe because a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous.’ It’s this idea that it doesn’t matter how wise or righteous you are in a corrupt system, where the golden rule isn’t love your neighbor, it’s the guy with the gold makes the rules. So corruption is this core virus in our system that prevents us from having things like healthcare and roads without potholes in them.”
There’s data to bear out the Rabbi’s point. In 2014, researchers from Indiana University and the University of Hong Kong discovered that Pennsylvanians effectively pay a $1,300 annual de facto corruption tax. You’d think there would be a political benefit in these populist times to wiping that out for folks, no?
“Corruption is this core virus in our system that prevents us from having things like healthcare and roads without potholes in them.” — Rabbi Michael Pollack
Solomon makes that political case to his fellow democrats, once a party of reformers. After all, it’s likely the democratic governor will be challenged by Republican Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a Trump supporter without the mean-spirited tone who actually collaborates with democrats, and who, in last November’s election results, exceeded Shapiro’s vote total as the highest ever in Commonwealth history.
Shapiro may need a reformist win, which dovetails with his previous bona fides: When he was in the House, Shapiro was instrumental in cleaning up the mess known as Bonusgate; as Montgomery County Commissioner, he zero-budgeted his way to rightsizing government; and, as Attorney General, he prosecuted a bevy of corrupt politicians.
“We’ve got to get this bill to his desk so the Governor can sign it,” Solomon says.
For his part, Rabbi Pollack makes the same case to both sides of the aisle. “We tell legislators the first party to earn the people’s trust by getting money out of politics is going to win every election for three generations,” he says. “You’re going to win by FDR margins — like 70 percent of the vote. 93 percent of Pennsylvanians think money in politics is a direct threat to democracy. This is the core underlying the trust issue in our society and every election is really just an answer to the question of which side are you on? That’s what voters want to know. Are you working for me or are you working for someone or something else?”
“They like the gifts.”
So if it’s such a political winner, why don’t the pols fall in line — especially the democrats, who like to at least mouth good government platitudes? Solomon says it’s entrenched power that oils the status quo. Rabbi Pollack takes it even further. “This may be overly simplistic, but they like the gifts,” he says. “Including the governor. He’s very skilled at soliciting money in politics. He likes the Super Bowl and Sixers tickets.”
In that sense, if Rabbi Pollack is right, reform ultimately runs up against the basic human condition. Some legislators express their gratitude to the rabbi, but most fall into one of two buckets. “My favorite is the more confessional, pastoral relationships that develop,” he says. “A legislator will finally have someone they can talk to and they’ll just start pouring it all out, how absurd this place is. And then there are those who are just very, very angry with you. You know, when most legislators wake up in the morning, they don’t tell themselves a story to get through the day where they’re the villain. There’s a whole set of rationalizations that ignore the obvious bribery and corruption they’re operating in.
“You know, when most legislators wake up in the morning, they don’t tell themselves a story to get through the day where they’re the villain. There’s a whole set of rationalizations that ignore the obvious bribery and corruption they’re operating in.” — Rabbi Michael Pollack
“I’m told pretty bluntly, ‘How dare you shatter the illusions that I carry about myself and how this place operates?’ So that’s part of what nonviolence resistance is. You have to just kind of absorb that anger and calmly force the encounter until you get to a more productive place.”
Which brings us back to Don Quixote, and that whole tilting at windmills thing. Solomon has proposed some form of gift ban just about every year he’s been in elected office. Are he, Rigby and Rabbi Pollack deluded, like Quixote? Well, keep in mind, Quixote may have been insane, but he was also on a fevered mission to civilize. That’s what political reform can do today. Make fairer the playing field. Give voice to others. Calm the electorate.
Solomon’s argument to his fellow pols is that reform is in their self-interest, if not today … someday, and soon. Rabbi Pollack’s sense of hope predictably comes from a more spiritual place. He cites an old Chinese proverb when I ask why he keeps tilting: Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
“The work itself is the hope, and if we keep walking, the dam will break,” says the rabbi. “Because it always does. Every empire collapses. Every corrupt system falls apart and then something new replaces it.”
The Fix is made possible through a grant from the Thomas Skelton Harrison Foundation. The Harrison Foundation does not exercise editorial control or approval over the content of any material published by The Philadelphia Citizen.
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