Guest Opinion: PA House has time to target Krasner, but not firearms

Americans, shocked by recent mass killings, have prayed for the citizens of Uvalde, Buffalo, and Tulsa. In Washington D.C., a polarized and divided Senate agreed on a bipartisan gun control bill. What happened in Harrisburg?

Between February and September 2021, four firearm reform bills were introduced in the PA House and sent to the Judiciary committee. The Judiciary chair — Rob Kauffman, R-Franklin County — ignored them. The House rules allow the chair total power to choose the agenda and what bills to consider. Chairs block 75% of bills and, despite the recent gun violence, Mr. Kauffman did not budge.

According to Spotlight PA, Democratic legislators planned to introduce a discharge resolution for the bills Thursday, June 9. A discharge resolution would force the bills out of committee to the PA House floor for a potential vote.

But on Wednesday June 8, Speaker Bryan Cutler canceled the entire House legislative session, so the discharge resolution had to wait. (The Speaker can do that.) The next session was scheduled for June 13 at noon.

The Judiciary Committee met at 10 a.m. June 13, two hours before the House session. Committee members suddenly decided to vote the bills out of committee with a recommendation to refer them to a different committee. This keeps the bills from a floor debate, vote and passage. Speaker Cutler obliged and sent the four bills to a second committee, which has 15 days to review them before any discharge resolution can begin. The session recesses for the summer shortly, so PA citizens are guaranteed no action until at least September. Yet again, House leaders have postponed debate and voting.

In the meantime, House members have the time and energy to pursue impeachment articles against Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.

The shenanigans on gun control bills are a calculated manipulation of the House rules. The leaders did not just kick the ball down the road, but “kicked the ball under the bleachers" (Rep. Mike Zabel, D-Delaware County, June 13 during Judiciary Committee meeting) where no one can get to it. Speaker Cutler and others claim outrage in how the Philadelphia DA meets his responsibilities to Philadelphia residents. Yet the Speaker and a single committee chair sabotaged all efforts to discuss laws to reduce gun violence. This sequence starkly shows a broken and deeply uncollaborative Harrisburg. The dysfunction does tremendous harm to our state and its citizens.

It’s not just gun violence.

These same rules tactics have been used to banish bills with strong bipartisan support on broadband internet access, nurse staffing ratios, redistricting reform, screening children for lead, preventing puppy mills and many more. These problems and the untouched bills all languish session after session. Committee chairs rule like kings and compromise is a dirty word. How is this acceptable?

FairVote, a 30-year-old nonpartisan group devoted to election reform, gives Utah, North Dakota, Maine and Colorado a 100% rating on agenda setting; PA gets a zero. Our rules allow a committee chair to set agenda topics with impunity and thus obstruct bills. Our discharge resolution process should free a bill from committee but never works. It doesn’t have to be this way.

We need to reform the rules and give our legislators the chance to properly consider, debate and vote on issues that matter. Other states do this. Let’s fix Harrisburg: Tell your representatives you want rules reform now. Go to FixHarrisburg.com and #fixharrisburg.

Rachel Sorokin Goff lives in Elkins Park and volunteers with Fair Districts PA (FDPA), where she chairs the Rules Reform Committee. Lancaster County resident Amy Ruffo is communications director for Fair Districts PA.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Guest Opinion: PA House has time to target Krasner, but not firearms