Hello DailyKos. I am Bryan Lentz and I am running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District. I wanted to take a few minutes today, on the day our President will deliver the State of Union, and bring you up date on some recent developments in my state.
More and more it seems that the most powerful party in politics is not the Democrats or the Republicans – it seems the most powerful party is the Corporate-Incumbent party. Hell bent on voting to preserve their place in elected office and line the pockets of their corporate contributors, this party has hijacked every policy debate, from clean energy to healthcare and everything in between.
We must work together to drive this party out of our government. In case you missed my first post, I believe it is a serious obligation of public officials to stand up to whoever is standing in the way of reform, whether it is members of the other party or your own party leaders. I stood up to my party leadership when I believed they had failed to serve the public interest, and I will continue to stand up against the go-along-to-get along mentality that is so pervasive in Washington.
You can read about my broad thoughts on reform and the state of our government in my op-ed that our local paper called “Restoring our faith in politicians”. In this post, I’d like to tell you the story of the recent gambling legislation in Pennsylvania—a troubling tale of how corporate greed once again forced the voters into the back seat of the public policy debate.
The go-along-to-get-along mentality was in full force recently in my home state of Pennsylvania, where the state government just passed legislation allowing table games in casinos. I voted against the bill (S.B. 711) because it caters to the casino industry over the people and sells the taxpayers short. Since the bill’s passage, more than a couple tales of questionable backdoor dealings and potential lobbying law violations have emerged.
This bill was a golden opportunity—an opportunity to pass critical reforms in state gambling laws and an opportunity to generate significant revenue for struggling state and local municipalities. Unfortunately, the final legislation reflected only how much influence money can buy and fell far short of any real progress benefitting the people of Pennsylvania.
Right now, slots in Pennsylvania are taxed at 55 percent. Why wouldn’t table games, a much more lucrative venture, be taxed at the same rate? It is easy to see the special interests’ fingerprints in this—the final bill taxed table games at a mere 12-14 percent. This rate is disgracefully short of the original, inadequate proposal of 34 percent. Millions of dollars in revenue that should be used for the people—for helping people in dire economic times, for our struggling state budget, for property tax relief—will instead be lining the coffers of rich casino investors.
This rate was largely determined by corporate casino lobbyists, not by an independent commission, citizens’ advisory board, or any group with the taxpayers’ interests in mind. The Philadelphia Inquirer recently uncovered how one casino benefitted tremendously from a single, powerful sentence quietly inserted in a 230-page bill.
When General Assembly leaders met behind closed doors to work out a final version of the table-games bill, they kept the sentence in.
The story behind those words shows how, even in an era of greater government transparency and right-to-know laws, a well-connected private interest successfully pressed its cause in Harrisburg in ways invisible to the public.
This is the story that got out; it is not hard to imagine that other parts of the bill were similarly manipulated by the hands of lobbyists.
A system which allows special interests to exert such influence does not act in the service of the people and should have no place in a strong democracy like ours. Other questions have emerged about a casino trade association group headed by an ex-state Supreme Court justice and funded by casino owners, one of whom received a surprising deal from prosecutors who dropped charges against him after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court exercised what prosecutors called “extraordinary authority” to interfere with his case.
Not only was the legislation subject to the heavy hand of powerful lobbyists, the bill is laden with special interest projects, inserted to avoid the traditional budgetary review process and to court specific votes for the bill. Most of these projects are likely worthy of the funds they received, but they should be subject to the same reviews as other funding. This quid pro quo system of political favors serves only those with enough money to get their voice heard.
The deadline extension for the frequently-delinquent casino was not made public until too late. Questions about potential violations of lobbying disclosure laws and problematic judicial connections emerged only after the legislation was passed and signed into law, too late for public protests. It was up to the people’s representatives to see the backdoor dealing and protest against it, but unfortunately, that did not happen.
These problems are not isolated to state governments. It’s not just Pennsylvania but our electoral system that needs real reform on every level, especially federal—reform that prevents moneyed special interests from buying influence, reform that makes the entire budgetary process more transparent and subject to review, and reform that makes sure the taxpayers’ interests are at the center of every piece of legislation. That is what progressive policy is about, that is what I have been working towards in Pennsylvania, and that is what I will try to do if I am elected to Congress. I will always stand up for the interests of the people, even if it is my own party leaders that I must stand against.