HARRISBURG, December 3, 2018 – The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate will both serve on the bipartisan Pennsylvania Redistricting Reform Commission formed by Gov. Tom Wolf and they intend to participate fully in the panel’s work.
Sen. Jay Costa and Rep. Frank Dermody look forward to helping in a comprehensive review of Pennsylvania’s redistricting process and offering recommendations later in 2019 to improve its integrity and fairness.
“The commission has no authority to change state law and will simply be offering ideas for the governor and legislature to consider using during the redistricting process,” Dermody said. “That’s a worthy purpose and we’re proud to join Governor Wolf’s appointees in undertaking a serious effort that will offer needed perspective.”
“A key part of the group’s effort will be getting citizens to engage in our work. For too long they have felt shut out of a meaningful role in redistricting,” Costa said. “The upcoming work of the commission will prioritize hearing what the public has to say.”
Wolf established the commission with an executive order last week and appointed 11 of the 15 members. The remaining four slots are for legislators chosen by the respective leaders of the four legislative caucuses.
Wolf also named David Thornburgh of the Committee of Seventy in Philadelphia to lead the commission and gave the group nine months to do its work and produce recommendations.
Costa and Dermody were puzzled by the initial hostile reaction of Republican leadership.
“This is an important assignment and it should be completed in a non-partisan spirit as the governor envisions,” Costa said.
“We hope our Republican colleagues will listen to the many people who are excited about this work and then decide to take part,” Dermody said.
CONTACT: Bill Patton
House Democratic Leader’s Office
Phone: 717-787-3566
Email: bpatton@pahouse.net
CONTACT: Brittany Crampsie
Senate Democratic Leader’s Office
Phone: (717) 712-3480
Email: brittany.crampsie@pasenate.com
Op-ed By Senator Jay Costa, Jr. & Rep. Frank Dermody
Sitting on Governor Tom Wolf’s desk right now is Senate Bill 936 – legislation that would interfere with the relationship between an injured worker and their doctor, as a way to save money for the insurance industry.
As our system currently operates, when a worker is hurt on the job they see a physician and that medical professional determines the best course of treatment and prescription medication that their patient requires. SB 936 would instead require a formulary that overrides doctors, and allows prescriptions only as mandated by an insurer. If a worker would prefer the treatment that their trusted physician has prescribed, they have few and risky options: they can pay wholly out of pocket for their medicine, they can enter an cumbersome appeals process that is controlled by the same insurance companies imposing the restrictions on their prescription choices, or they can take whatever the formulary allows and pray that it works, doesn’t react with other medications that they are taking (that the formulary doesn’t account for), or doesn’t have side effects.
The kind of system this bill would create is incredibly restrictive, and would limit doctors to just 20 therapeutic classes of drugs. For context, the average insurance provider offers more than 100 classes.
Savings from a plan like this, if any exist, would come from undercutting workers who have been hurt on the job by limiting the prescriptions that they can receive and lowering workers compensation rates for their employers. If someone has been hurt on the job, they should be entitled to the health care that their doctor prescribes, not the bargain basement plan designed by insurers in this formulary.
That’s especially true for police and prison guards who put their lives on the line every day to protect us. As the president of the Pa. State Troopers Association said, “a Trooper’s duty often results in physical injury … due deference to the physician’s personal knowledge of the injured Trooper should be preserved, not compromised by faulty legislation such as SB 936.”
And the president of the Pa. State Corrections Officers Association (prison guards) said in February, the bill “is simply an attempt to change our Workers Compensation program and place more burdens on workers who are injured in the line of duty.”
Simply put, it is an assault on workers, on par with the rest of the anti-worker agenda that the extremists in the Republican party are pushing. Just as they have denied an increase in the minimum wage, blocked funding for the unemployment system, attempted to abolish collective bargaining, this bill is another grab at workers’ rights.
Corporations and insurance companies cooked up this benefits reduction plan based on a similar system in Texas, a state notorious for its poor treatment of workers. In the Lone Star State, employers are not even required to provide workplace injury coverage at all. That’s not how we have treated or should be treating our workers here in Pennsylvania.
At its core, this plan is a hateful attack on injured workers, just to save a little money on compensation rates; and many Republicans saw through it. The bill failed its first vote in the House, but the anti-worker extremists used parliamentary maneuvers to get it a reconsideration two months later, where it passed with the bare minimum number of votes it needed. No Democrat supported this bill, and no Republican who respects workers did either.
A measure this important to the health of our workforce should not have been so political and so forced. The bill barely made it to the Governor’s desk, and we urge him to end its consideration and veto it immediately.
Harrisburg – July 19, 2017 – State Senator Jay Costa (D-Allegheny) and Representative Frank Dermody (D-Allegheny/Westmoreland) today issued the following statement in reaction to the House Republican leadership’s continuing refusal to call the House into session to work toward closure on the 2017-18 budget:
“The House last met over a week ago without completing the work on revenue needed to finalize the state budget. Republican Speaker Mike Turzai has not advised lawmakers of when the House might reconvene.
“This ongoing failure to finish our work on the budget means the state-related schools – the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State, Temple University and Lincoln University are in danger of not receiving any state appropriations this year. In addition, the University of Pennsylvania’s Veterinary School is unfunded.
“It’s disturbing that we have hit late July and still do not have a finished 2017-18 fiscal year revenue plan. Four parties in the budget talks have been around the table working toward an agreement, but consistently the House Republicans have refused to engage.
“This bizarre situation is unconscionable. We have an incomplete budget and Pennsylvania families are wondering what happens next, especially those families preparing to send their children to college in the next few weeks. Unfortunately, these families and our state-related universities are being used as budget pawns by the House Republicans.
“No one wins in this game House Republicans are trying to play. Holding university money hostage hurts students, their families and the communities that depend on them. It’s time for House Republicans to stop playing around and return to Harrisburg to finish the job we are obligated to do.”
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Accountability and transparency concerns cited
Harrisburg – April 28, 2014 – Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa (D-Allegheny) and House Democratic Leader Frank Dermody (D-Allegheny) said that there should be no votes on bills after Election Day in November.
In order to formally ask that there be no votes in a lame-duck session, Costa said today he has sent a letter to the Senate’s president pro tempore and the speaker of the House of Representatives urging them to announce that neither body will hold post-election session days.
In his letter to Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati and Speaker of the House of Representatives Samuel Smith, Costa acknowledges that while post-election sessions may be necessary at some point in the future, “in the interests of member accountability to the citizens of each district and transparency of the process, I do not believe we should be holding post-election sessions this year (.)”
Dermody said both leaders are concerned that the problems Gov. Tom Corbett has encountered in getting his agenda adopted could lead to a wave of bills that the General Assembly could confront post-election.
“Neither the governor, nor members of both parties in both chambers are immediately accountable to the citizens of their districts via the democratic process if votes are taken in a 2014 lame-duck session,” Dermody said. “The governor may try to use a lame-duck session to push aggressively for issues that found little support when he was directly accountable to the voters.”
“We need to be upfront and allow citizens to evaluate the full record of the General Assembly and the governor at the ballot box, not after votes have been cast,” Costa commented after disclosing the details of his letter. “By November of this year, the legislature will have had nearly two full years to work through issues.”
Costa said that it was time that the General Assembly consider prohibiting lame-duck sessions. He pointed to legislation (SB 695) authored by Sen. Rob Teplitz (D-Dauphin) that would take steps toward such a prohibition.
The General Assembly adjourns sine die on November 30.
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Editor’s Note: Text of Costa’s letter follows
April 28, 2014
Hon. Joseph Scarnati, President Pro Tempore
Senate of Pennsylvania
292 Main Capitol Building
Harrisburg, PA 17120
Hon. Samuel H. Smith, Speaker
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
139 Main Capitol Building
Harrisburg, PA 17120
Dear President Scarnati and Speaker Smith:
As you well know, it is critical that members of the General Assembly be held accountable to the citizens of their districts for votes cast on the Senate and House floor. Therefore, post-General Election voting sessions, in which substantive legislative matters are considered, should be held only in emergency situations or in limited instances when there is a compelling need.
In the interests of member accountability to the citizens of each district, and transparency of the process, I do not believe we should be holding post-election sessions this year to move pieces of the governor’s policy agenda which failed to be considered prior to the General Election.
Therefore, I am requesting that you announce that the General Assembly will not be scheduling post-General Election session days this year. The final session days for both the Senate and House of Representatives should be held prior to the November election and the sine die adjournment on November 30, 2014. This ensures that the members of the General Assembly and the governor are held accountable for their votes and that their full record is available for scrutiny.
It is imperative that a decision regarding session is made and announced soon so that there can be proper planning by all members. In addition, it is important that the announcement be timely so that floor leaders in both the House and Senate can properly manage the legislative calendar.
Please advise me as soon as possible concerning my request to refrain from holding legislative session following this year’s General Election.
Sincerely,
Sen. Jay Costa
Democratic Leader
Harrisburg – February 7, 2013 – Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate and House legislative leaders said today that they strongly oppose a Republican plan to make changes in the current Electoral College winner-take-all system that could reduce the state’s national electoral clout and unfairly swing elections to Republican presidential candidates.
State Sen. Jay Costa (D-Allegheny) and Rep. Frank Dermody, Democratic leaders in the Senate and House respectively, said that no change should be made in the Electoral College system. A winner-take-all system is used in 48 states.
“The Republican plan for changing the system to one where the apportionment of electors is based on the proportional vote of each candidate would effectively end Pennsylvania’s importance as a swing state,” Costa said. “The proposed plan is a partisan scheme that diminishes the voice of Pennsylvania on the national stage.
“Gov. Corbett needs to quickly, and unequivocally, reject this attempt to destroy a system that has served Pennsylvania well.”
The senator said that Republicans floated the idea because President Obama carried the state in the last two General Elections and Democratic presidential candidates have won Pennsylvania repeatedly over the last generation. Meanwhile, there is no plan to split the vote proportionally in heavily Republican states such as Texas and Alabama, he said.
Dermody said that Republican governors in Ohio and Virginia have rejected these types of schemes as violating a basic sense of fairness, but Gov. Corbett has failed to categorically reject this assault on fair elections.
“Although Republicans are couching their proposals in the language of fairness, the motivation for changing the Electoral College is purely partisan,” Dermody (D-Allegheny) said. “The Republican Party lost in 2012 because they failed to appeal to the majority of voters in Pennsylvania.
“They know they can’t win on the issues, so they are resorting to underhanded tactics and undermining the principle that the candidate who obtains a majority of the votes should prevail.”
Dermody went further, saying that the Republican plan “is about rigging the game and diminishing Pennsylvania’s influence over who becomes our next president.”
Costa and Dermody called on Gov. Corbett to immediately declare his opposition to the proposal and pledge to work with both Republicans and Democrats to solve critical challenges such as job creation, education, transportation and repairing the social safety net.
“This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen national Republicans push Pennsylvania Republicans to make changes for partisan purposes,” Costa said. “Republicans tried to help their candidate last year in the presidential election by adopting a flawed voter ID law that caused legal action and confusion on Election Day.”
“In order to improve their chances in Pennsylvania, the national Republican Party should alter its extreme policy views rather than rigging the rules of elections,” Dermody said. “It makes no sense for Pennsylvania to arbitrarily reduce its considerable national political profile and relegate us to small state status.”
Pennsylvania has 20 electors that cast votes in the Electoral College.
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