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Rendell reform push noble but likely doomed MARK GUYDISH OPINION

Thursday November 19, 2009 | 12:00 AM

Gov. Cheesesteak came to town Tuesday on what I’ll call his “Legacy Tour,” pushing his last great agenda: Reform Harrisburg.

Good luck. Pols there think “status quo” is Latin for “inalienable rights.”

In fairness, I should stop calling him Gov. Cheesesteak. Ed Rendell is positively svelte after losing 55 pounds, a feat he mentioned while griping about what he dubbed the Harrisburg “gotcha” press corps. “People know more about my weight loss” than about his politics, he chuckled.

Rendell rattles off statistics and policy minutiae, yet talks like an old school chum reminiscing at a reunion. He touted accomplishments: the boost in funding for education and early childhood programs, expansion of the prescription assistance program, environmental initiatives. Then he bemoaned systemic flaws in Harrisburg.

“The process is woeful and the process is broken, and because of the process we don’t do a lot of things we should be doing,” Rendell said.

Take sales tax reform. He listed a few ideas. Stop giving retailers 1 percent of the sales tax collected if they file tax returns on time. This would put $72 million a year into state coffers and only cost most retailers $9 to $100 annually. The hang-up? Rendell claimed a few mega-retailers spend a small fortune lobbying against change.

Stop exempting cigars and smokeless tobacco, raising $65 million. Sounds like a no-brainer, but Rendell said one legislative leader has a cigar factory in his district – which gives new meaning to “deals in smoke-filled rooms.”

Stop exempting candy and gum, collecting $100 million. Rendell said this was “a bone” tossed to Hershey Chocolate, which would be fine if the confection giant hadn’t shifted production out of country. “You have to habla Espanol to communicate with most Hershey workers right now.”

And don’t add more exemptions. Rendell said the Legislature exempted gold bullion and helicopters from sales tax in the last two year. People who buy bullion and choppers are too poor to pay sales tax?

Signals not too encouraging

Rendell proposed commonsense reforms: Limit campaign contributions to reduce influence of rich lobbies; take the decennial redrawing of legislative district boundaries out of the Legislature’s hands to eliminate gerrymandering; and select judges on merit to eliminate expensive elections that risk compromising the impartiality of winners and potentially let incompetents get behind the bench. Why elect judges, he argued, if “most people don’t have a clue who they are voting for.”

Conspicuously absent from his proposed reforms: shrinking our bloated state government and eliminating “Walk Around Money,” grants the legislators essentially use to buy votes, to name just two.

Rendell said he thinks now’s a good time to get such sweeping reforms done because people are still angry about the budget battle. I admire the chutzpah and approve of the goals, but fear he’s being overly optimistic about the public’s staying power. We can change the way government works, but too often we get disheartened or disgusted before the job is done.

Rendell practically admitted as much. Under his proposal for merit selection of judges, he wants to let counties keep the old system if voters agreed to do so in a referendum

When he asked if Luzerne County voters would approve a merit selection, everyone in the room hesitated.

“It’s not a slam-dunk, is it?” he asked.

In a county where people charged with corruption and forced to resign still win school board races? Sadly, no.

About the Author

Mark Guydish covers education for the Times Leader. Reach him at (570) 970-7161 or mguydish@timesleader.com.

A West Hazleton native, I worked as a service technician repairing electronic mailing and shipping systems, a bike shop owner and an Emergency Medical Technician (among other jobs) before landing a reporter job at the Times Leader Hazleton Bureau in 1995. I started by covering primarily politics in Hazleton City and outlying municipalities, eventually became "social issues" team leader in the Wilkes-Barre office with the accent on education, and headed the Hazleton Bureau for a spell before returning to full-time reporting, my preferred position. I'm an avid cyclist and rode across the country in 1990, a trip of more than 5,000 miles from New Jersey to Seattle and down the coast to San Francisco. Years in the Boy Scouts made me a life long backpacker and camper, and I've yet to find a better way to enjoy the quiet lure of winter snow than cross country skiing.

Mark also writes a regular blog for timesleader.com.