The state is getting just a little bit closer to requiring more transparency on the part of the Pennsylvania General Assembly.
On Tuesday, the House State Government Committee approved the bill that would make legislative expense reports more easily accessible to the public online.
“How can anyone be against it?” said state Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Centre County.
Good question. Yet one would be forgiven a bit of cynicism — even if the committee vote was unanimous.
On the one hand, voting for transparency is a smart move from a campaigning standpoint. It will be hard to sell opposition to freely available information to voters during an election year where candidates will play a high-stakes game of musical chairs for the shuffled legislative districts.
On the other, lawmakers historically have been eager to restrict and regulate the actions of others while being much less eager to give in to those limits themselves.
After all, the reasons for opening up the records are obvious. The money being spent on those expenses — dinners and hotel rooms and such — is not the legislators’ money. It belongs to people of Pennsylvania, and those people have every right to know where and how and on what that money is being spent.
The first real hurdle to the bill comes as it heads toward a full House vote. That is likely to happen before the May primary. From there, it would go to Senate committees and then a full Senate vote. Assuming there are no changes to send it cycling back through the whole process for new approval — and that’s a big assumption — the earliest the bill would go into effect would be 2023.
That does not mean the people need to accept being unable to know what their legislators are spending until then.
The people can and should show their support for the bill by contacting those lawmakers and expressing how much they want to see a law passed that holds them openly accountable. At the same time, they can demand those representatives and senators live up to this request that should be the very bottom rung of requirements for the office even before the law is passed.
Elected officials should never forget that they are there to serve and answer to the public — whether there is a specific law in place or not.
