The Pennsylvania Legislature moved a step closer to
preventing governments from deducting political donations from unionized
workers’ paychecks — and protect lawmakers’ ability to mix work and
politics.
On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled House approved Senate Bill 166 that prohibits state, county and local governments from using their payroll systems to let teachers, police officers, firefighters and other workers from voluntarily asking their employers to deduct money for their respective union’s political action committees. The bill, which passed the GOP-controlled Senate in February, would apply to all unions after their current contracts expire.
The House still must approve the bill one more time and that vote may come Wednesday. If the bill passes the next time, it would go to Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf who appears ready to veto it.
“This legislation is anti-police officer, anti-firefighter, anti-nurse, and anti-teacher and that’s why Gov. Wolf is against it,” his spokesman J.J. Abbott said. “While the Republican Legislature takes unlimited gifts from lobbyists, they have the gall to undermine workers in the real world trying to provide for their families. This is shameful and Harrisburg at its worst.”
Under current law, government employees can request their employer deduct from their paychecks regular union dues or an equal amount if they opt to not join the union. Workers can make a separate election to have an additional amount deduced for a union’s PAC or any other cause. The state spends $100 to run the entire electronic deduction program for all workers , according to the state Treasury’s office.
The bill only targets the extra PAC money deductions, not normal union dues.
If Tuesday’s debate and vote was any indication, the next House vote on the bill could be long and contentious. Republicans claimed the bill would end possible corruption by preventing taxpayers from subsidizing politics.
“It’s an issue of integrity,” said Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, adding lawmakers and judges have gone to prison in past for using taxpayer resources for campaigns.
Democrats called Republicans hypocrites for targeting only unionized middle-class workers and rejecting multiple amendments that would have limited lawmakers’ or other organizations’ from conducting politics with the help of tax dollars.
Most of those amendments were introduced by Rep. Matt Bradford, D-Montgomery. One amendment would have prevented lawmakers from getting a salary and receiving reimbursements for food and lodging expenses on legislative session days if they also attend political fundraisers on that same day. Another amendment would have precluded lawmakers from accepting only flood and lodging expenses, known as per diems, if they do campaign work on the same day they are in the Capitol.
The amendments, and others like them, were defeated at the urging of House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny. Turzai ruled that the amendments were not legal because he said they violated the single-subject rule. That rule prevents one bill from having multiple topics. Turzai said the underlying Senate bill was only about electronic payroll deductions and per diems are not paid through those systems.
In response to Turzai’s rulings, Bradford said Republicans were trying to hide behind a procedural rule in an effort to hide their insincerity. It doesn’t make sense, Bradford said, to say workers’ personal money cannot be automatically deducted for union PACs but lawmakers can be paid with taxpayer money for expense reimbursements at the same time they are seeking campaign contributions at a fundraiser.
“If reform is on agenda then let’s begin with this body,” Bradford said. “Let’s not be hypocrites.”
Other amendments also failed, including a few that would have prevented employees and lawmakers from being allowed to make direct contributions to all charities and other endeavors from their paychecks.
Senate Bill 166, sponsored by Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Blair, is the first so-called paycheck protection bill that included all types of unions. In previous years, including 2017, lawmakers have introduced anti-PAC deduction bills and other anti-union bills that targeted only teachers unions and maintenance and secretarial unions while excluding law enforcement, corrections and firefighter unions.
On Tuesday, Rep. Barry Jozwiak, R-Berks, a retired state trooper, was poised to ask the House to amend Eichelberger’s bill to exclude police, corrections and fire unions. But, Joswiak told Turzai he was withdrawing his amendment at the request of the state trooper’s union and state chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police.
The state’s largest teachers union slammed the bill and lawmakers who supported it.
“This isn’t good government,” said Dolores McCracken, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association. “I wish that lawmakers intent on silencing working class voices would stop bullying the people who provide invaluable services to our children and our communities every day.”
With Jozwiak’s amendment gone, the House’s final vote is expected to be closer than normal in the chamber where Republicans have 121 of the 203 seats.
Source: The
Morning Call
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