State poll shows voters want further change in Legislature
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The Pennsylvania General Assembly is a bifurcated institution, with a central meeting point at the state Capitol and a decentralized operation spread among district offices across the state.
This two-footedness is a key reason why it's difficult to enact fundamental reforms to change the legislative branch even after the controversial and ultimately failed legislative pay raise in 2005 and the Bonusgate investigation that started in 2007 into illegal use of taxpayer dollars for campaign purposes.
The reforms undertaken during the past half-dozen years since the pay raise controversy have been done on the margins, concerned with tweaking lawmaker benefits, trimming spending, doing away with late-night voting sessions and putting information about legislative actions online.
And now comes a new statewide poll suggesting that voters by large majorities still want something more. The poll done for Democracy Rising, the activist group, examines attitudes about public integrity.
The survey of 507 registered voters was conducted last month by Terry Madonna Opinion Research. The poll has a plus or minus margin of error of 4.4 percent.
During the past six years, there's been a lot of talk but little more concerning broad-based structural reforms, such as convening a state constitutional convention, reducing the size of the House and Senate, banning gifts from lobbyists, changing the redistricting process and providing more citizen initiative, referendums and recalls of elected officials.
The Democracy Rising poll shows majorities in the 80 percent range favor these changes, which involve amending the state constitution except for campaign finance limits, which can be done through legislation.
Democracy Rising's Tim Potts is a big advocate for a constitutional convention, arguing it can bring reform more quickly than if each issue is dealt with as a single amendment. Those surveyed favor going the convention route 68 percent to 28 percent, with four percent undecided.
On issues involving the conduct of lawmakers themselves, those surveyed think 50 percent to 32 percent that lawmakers should not be allowed to earn outside income. But they agree 65 percent to 26 percent that lawmakers should have pensions and health care benefits. By a whopping margin of 93 percent to 6 percent, they want to prohibit public officials from accepting anything of value from influence peddlers.
On another hot issue, survey respondents favor requiring voters to show a driver's license or other state-issued identification at the polls by 86 percent to 9 percent.
Lawmakers and elected officials should pay attention to the survey as they get ready to face voters in November, said Potts.
(Swift is Harrisburg bureau chief for Times-Shamrock Communications newspapers. E-mail rswift@timesshamrock.com.)
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