EDITORIAL:No mandate for amendments; reform process
An editorial from the Wilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice:
The impending session of the state House of Representatives looks like a hockey game in which a fight breaks out before the first puck is dropped.
Democrats clocked Republicans in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, retaining the governorship, winning nine of 17 U.S. House seats, flipping a U.S. Senate seat and capturing a one-vote majority in the state House with a net gain of 12 seats.
Three seats won by Democrats, all in heavily Democratic Allegheny County, now are vacant and must be filled by special election. Rep. Anthony DeLuca died before the election and was elected posthumously. Rep. Austin Davis resigned after being elected lieutenant governor, and Rep. Summer Lee resigned after being elected to Congress.
House Democrats and Republicans agreed to conduct the special election to replace DeLuca on Feb. 7. But in an extraordinary act of hubris, House Republican leader Bryan Cutler has attempted to schedule the other two races for May, rather than with the DeLuca race.
Denied the ability to gerrymander, by court rulings and a fair redistricting process following the 2020 census, Cutler continues to cling to minority rule.
While in the majority during the final session of the past Legislature, Republicans passed a package of state constitutional amendments on matters that mostly should be considered as legislation. To place those amendments on the ballot, the House and Senate would have to pass them a second time. Cutler wants to delay the special elections until May so an ersatz Republican “majority” can pass the amendments a second time, and place them on the ballot for the low-turnout primary election.
Allegheny County voters deserve to be represented in the House as soon as possible, regardless of whether it upsets Cutler’s amendment-based end run around the legislative process.
Cutler and his caucus don’t have a mandate to do anything, much less claim a majority that the people of Pennsylvania specifically have denied them, even if only by one seat.