LANCASTER (TNS) — In the Pennsylvania Legislature, the more things change, the more they stay the same

It’s been 20 years since the Pennsylvania Legislature voted in the early morning hours of July 7, 2005, to give themselves a 16% to 34% pay hike, with the amount depending on seniority, rank and title. Raises for state judges and executive branch officials also were included in the legislative package, which was quickly signed by Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell.

Activists mounted a statewide campaign to organize public outrage. A Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge was removed from the bench by angry voters in the 2005 elections, and despite lawmakers’ nearly unanimous vote to repeal the raise just a few months after it was passed, more than 50 legislators — nearly one-fifth of the 253-member General Assembly — either lost their seats in the 2006 primary and general elections, or chose not to seek reelection.

But the shame of that episode has long faded inside Pennsylvania’s Capitol.

Good-government activist Tim Potts sums up the reality: “We have not done nearly enough to change the way Harrisburg functions. It is still a place where public integrity often goes to die.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro, then a state lawmaker, was tapped in 2007 to co-chair a special commission charged with making recommendations for reforming the Legislature. Some of those suggestions became law and remain on the books today, including an 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. working window for votes to be held in either chamber and a requirement that roll call and committee votes be posted online. But the minimum time for lawmakers to review a bill before a vote has eroded from the reform commission’s recommended 24 hours to just three hours.

Advocates cite that erosion as an example of how little transparency has improved in the state Capitol since the 2005 pay raise vote. And all these years after the infamous pay raise, we’re still having to plead with lawmakers to be more transparent about everything from legislative expenses to sexual harassment settlements.

We’re also still imploring them to deliver more for their constituents in exchange for their handsome salaries — about $110,000 this year for rank-and-file members.

Nine days past the deadline, there still isn’t a signed state budget, which means that school district funding remains up in the air.

The state Legislature is supposedly a full-time body, and lawmakers are paid accordingly. It ought to act like it, particularly now, when so many needs are going unmet by the Trump administration and Congress. It could start by increasing the number of days its chambers are in session and by passing a budget.

It could also, once and for all, eliminate per diems — flat-rate payments covering meals and lodging, for every session day lawmakers travel more than 50 miles from their homes for legislative business. Receipts are not required for per diems.

So many lawmakers campaign on having private-sector experience and then, once they get to Harrisburg, blithely abandon the practices that are common in the business world — like submitting receipts when seeking to be compensated for work-related expenses.

Brad Bumsted, former bureau chief for LNP Media Group’s The Caucus and author of the 2013 book, “Keystone Corruption: A Pennsylvania Insider’s View of a State Gone Wrong,” said some lawmakers still are abusing taxpayer dollars by inflating mileage reimbursements and taking per diems on top of their six-figure salaries.

These practices may not constitute the crime of the century, but they’re still unseemly.

Republican state Rep. Brett Miller, of East Hempfield Township, is the prime sponsor of House Bill 1053, which would prohibit per diem payments and reimburse legislators only for documented expenses.

“There are many people who, for instance, will submit for the per diem who will go out for dinner (on) a lobbyists’ dime — and yet they’ll collect the per diem as if they incurred that expense,” Miller told The Center Square, a news service, in 2023. “Same with hotels.”

Miller has proposed his bill before. We hope it gets to the floor for a vote.

And while Pennsylvania’s minimum wage remains, despite Democratic efforts, at a woefully inadequate $7.25 per hour — the same as the federal minimum wage — state lawmakers receive automatic cost-of-living pay raises each year that are tied to inflation.

As The Associated Press reported, more than 1,300 state officials, including Shapiro and all 253 lawmakers, got a pay raise of 3.4% in 2025. How many of their constituents were as fortunate?

Legislative efforts to eliminate that automatic pay bump have failed to gain traction.

Harrisburg’s resistance to reform is embodied by Republican state Rep. Russ Diamond of Lebanon County. After the infamous pay raise of 2005, Diamond launched an anti-incumbency organization, Clean Sweep PA. And then he made multiple attempts to get himself elected to public office.

After finally winning a seat in the state House of Representatives in 2014, Diamond apparently lost interest in fighting incumbency. He is now serving his sixth term.

Good-government activist Gene Stilp — who famously flew a giant inflatable pink pig on the Capitol steps at a 2005 protest — regards Diamond as a “sellout.” Diamond, Stilp noted, has accepted the automatic cost-of-living raises and has failed as a legislator to propose government reforms.

“This place works a lot different when you’re actually here, you know you have to actually try to get things done, and throwing rocks at all your colleagues is not the way to do it,” Diamond said, in response.

That feeble excuse is an example of moral compromise, of feeding at the public trough he once criticized. This isn’t the worst of Diamond’s utterances as a lawmaker (there are other, more egregious examples). But what is this getting “things done” he speaks about?

Also, being a state lawmaker is a well-paid gig, so why rock the boat by demanding reform?

As Stilp put it, the state Legislature is “like a giant, well-protected amoeba that changes shape to protect its own survival.”

It only will change shape when we demand it. We ought to demand it.

— LNP, Lancaster via TNS