Monica Yant Kinney: Disillusionment in the Pennsylvania legislature

Tim Briggs'

Jerry Maguire

moment happened a couple of weeks ago when the freshman state representative from Montgomery County watched helplessly as democracy in the Pennsylvania legislature was pummeled beyond recognition.

Briggs, a 40-year-old lawyer and progressive Democrat, ran for office for the first time in 2008 as a realist/reformer hoping to play a small part in Harrisburg's long-overdue detox.

No naïf, Briggs knew that gun-control legislation often succumbs to the persuasive powers of the National Rifle Association. But surely a controversial bill to greatly expand gun owners' rights to shoot to kill in self-defense would generate a spirited debate, he thought.

"We have debates," he says, "about naming bridges after people."

Instead, when the gun measure reached the House floor earlier this month, the newcomer witnessed legislators in both parties stand up and vote to squelch any discussion, pro or con. In a matter of minutes, a bill that police and prosecutors oppose won near-unanimous support from pols eager to appear tough on crime at election time.

Gobsmacked, the rookie legislator dashed off a daringly candid manifesto.

"We lost the vote; that I can accept," Briggs wrote. "But suppressing elected officials' freedom of speech . . . is an affront to the Constitution that we all swore to uphold."

"This practicing of parliamentary jujitsu was not in the name of justice or protecting innocent victims. It was in the name of cheap electoral hackery."

In the movie, Jerry Maguire's late-night "mission statement" becomes the talk of the town and gets him fired. So far, Briggs' 747-word catharsis has been seen mostly by family and Facebook friends.

"We write a lot of op-eds that never get printed," he says with a shrug. (To read more, go to www.pahouse.com/briggs)

I stumbled upon Briggs' prose on phawker.com and asked him if we could meet to discuss the risk of baring his soul in a town where others sell theirs.

"When I got elected, everyone said, 'Keep your head down, don't rock the boat, and get reelected,' " he told me Tuesday at the bustling MilkBoy Coffee in Ardmore. "But I don't want a 20-year career here spent with my head down."

Instead, Briggs bucked his party and was one of two Democrats to vote against Gov. Rendell's final budget. He did it, Briggs says, because the budget "overrelied on stimulus money" and underfunded public education.

After making his one-man stand, Briggs walked down to the parking garage and drove home to his wife and four kids in Upper Merion.

"Then I wrote another op-ed that never got printed."

Briggs raves about wise mentors like House legend Dwight Evans, who gamely put the rookie on his Appropriations Committee. Though still largely unknown, Briggs has won support for a bill protecting teen athletes with concussions. He hopes to see his foster-care reforms soon signed into law.

But after two years, Briggs still marvels at the lifers who've made an art form of doing nothing slowly.

Often, he finds, the only upside of this surreal circus is that "we run out of time and [a bad bill] dies, as a lot of things in the legislature do." He has a hunch the proposal to expand a gun owner's right to defend his "castle" will meet a similar fate and resurface next year.

"It would be nice to know if my son walking up someone's driveway in his Halloween costume could be defined as a perceived provocation under this bill, but we didn't get to debate it," Briggs sniffed. "So yes, I hope we run out of time on that."

At the beginning of his latest lament, Briggs opined, "Harrisburg is not for the weak of heart. During my first term . . . I have seen things that have made me think twice about running for reelection."

But he is, of course. They all do.