John Baer | Returning lawmakers have their hands full

A WOUNDED, limping Legislature returns to session today amid an unfolding scandal, internal frustrations and external low expectations.

Can anything improve its output and image? How about a Thanksgiving miracle?

Take the 50 House freshmen - including Philly Reps. Mike O'Brien and Tony Payton - add equal parts fortitude and grit and whip up mayhem until there's some improvement. Where are you newbies?

Weren't you elected just last year to "reform" the body and restore trust in the wake of the pay grab and other sins?

What do you tell your constituents next year while seeking reelection? We did nothing but send us back anyway?

You should take a flamethrower to the place. Next, assemble leaders of both parties, both chambers and explain - like talking to 4-year-olds - most folks don't differentiate between House and Senate, Republican or Democrat. It is your institution caught up in scandal for secretly, maybe illegally, spending $4 million in taxpayer money on suspect bonuses to employees.

And when one of your own is charged with paying relatives for no-show jobs, as former veteran lawmaker Frank LaGrotta was last week, all of you, rightly or wrongly, suffer.

It's part of a culture of culpability you yourselves created.

It stems from your pattern of abusing the Constitution, the treasury and the will of the electorate.

"Reform's not dead," House Speaker Denny O'Brien tells me, "it's only wounded." Yeah, well, I'd say critically wounded, in need of instant resuscitation. One place to start? Pay back the bonus money to the General Fund.

Use some of the $26.6 million in House "leadership accounts" or some of the $38.5 million in Senate "caucus operations" funds. Or dip into your $215 million "reserve" fund, which itself is an abuse. And Bill DeWeese?

It's your Democratic majority currently in the center ring of scrutiny. It's your seven staffers forced to resign for what looks like illegally using tax dollars for campaign work, then trying to cover it up. If you are able to remain in leadership (and I understand you're privately working hard to do so), show some.

Stand in the well of the House and announce a reboot of reform, starting with a payback of bonus funds and including reassessment of issues rejected by the Speaker's Commission on Legislative Reform.

That commission, a beacon of hope darkened by business-as-usual, refused to recommend term limits, reducing the size of the Legislature (the largest full-time body of its kind in the nation) or cutting its cost.

More recently, the House voted against even considering a Constitutional Convention, against toughening its own ethics committee and against better monitoring of government spending.

Any one of these issues represents substantive change of the nature needed to demonstrate reform is not dead, only wounded.

Put them back on the table.

Then pass an open-records law to show some accountability. Then act on bills to improve health care, public safety, energy use and medical research to show some interest in helping the people of Pennsylvania rather than just helping yourselves.

If you move meaningful progressive policy you can push your own pettiness out of the spotlight.

Nobody cares about your partisanship. Nobody's interested in your excuses.

Granted, it's asking for a miracle. But lawmakers and especially legislative leaders need to do something about the cost and conduct of the Legislature.

It's time to take charge. Reform this turkey. Or cut off its head.