When we last left off ... Former state representatives Steve Stetler, D-York, and Bruce Smith, R-Dillsburg, both stepped down before the 2006 election.
Both were taking a lot of heat as the only members of the York County statehouse delegation to vote for the 2005 legislative pay raise.
Especially Smith. Most of the Republican candidates from his district enthusiastically trashed him in the subsequent primary.
That pay raise vote was an outrage magnet for so many reasons. A lot of the lawmakers took advantage of a loophole to draw their pay raise early, which some watchdogs claimed was unconstitutional. It took place at 2 a.m., with no official notice and no debate, etc. etc.
Newspaper editorial boards, angry writers of letters to the editor and assorted bipartisan bloggers composed reams and reams of material on what was wrong with the pay raise vote in the following years. If you'd like to read some, a simple Google search should afford you plenty of material.
But at the risk of courting political and journalistic heresy, I'd like to put a little bit of that in perspective -- particularly where Stetler and Smith are concerned.
1) I think a lot of people didn't fully comprehend the context of the early morning vote. Much of the commentary made it sound as though the lawmakers set their alarm clocks for midnight, sneaked into the House and Senate chambers to vote for the pay raise at 2 a.m., then scurried out again in the hopes that nobody would notice.
Actually, the pay raise vote took place as part of the legislature's all-night round of budget negotiations, which was customary for the end of the fiscal year before the pay raise made it so unpopular.
Those all-night sessions were more a product of brinksmanship than subterfuge. The Democrats would want stuff in the annual state budget. The Republicans would want other stuff. So the night before the fiscal year ended, they would both camp out for a last-minute round of negotiations and stay there all night to see who would budge first.
I'm not saying it was a great set-up, or the most appropriate way to pass a pay raise. I'm just saying that their presence in the capitol at 2 a.m. that day wasn't unusual.
2) OK, I'm about to go waaaaaaay deep into the realm of heresy here.
State Rep. Steve Maitland, R-Gettysburg, lost his seat in the 2006 primary over his vote for the pay raise. In November of that year, he gave a defiant final speech in the House chambers defending his actions.
One of his quotes was: "In a very short period of time, I'll be making two to three times what a state representative makes."
And yeah, Maitland got lots of flak over that. People called him arrogant and ignorant.
But you know what? He was right on that particular point.
People like to automatically dismiss politicians in general and state lawmakers in particular as greedy and corrupt, exploiting their positions to line their own pockets.
They have considerably higher salaries than many of us, myself included. In truth, however, most of them really could be making a lot more in the private sector, without the long hours or the constant hounding from journalists and disgruntled constituents.
I'm not saying that state lawmakers are always noble and blameless. But if their main goal is to make a lot of money, they're in the wrong line of work.
3) It's nice to think that for every vote on every measure, each lawmaker votes solely on principle and the merits of that particular legislation. But it just doesn't work that way.
When a bill requires bipartisan support, the various factions in Harrisburg frequently have a handshake agreement well before the bill comes up for a vote. And when they're dealing with a measure that's likely to be unpopular with the public -- like, say, a legislative pay raise -- another strategic maneuver comes into play.
The caucus leaders will make sure the bill has just enough votes to pass, and ask certain members to take one for the team by voting for it. They need to make sure that the inevitable political backlash won't hit anybody who's particularly vulnerable.
So they don't want anybody whose seat is in danger come the next election. And they don't want anybody relatively new to the statehouse, who may not have enough clout with their constituents to withstand the backlash.
They want somebody secure in his or her seat, with a constituency heavily weighted toward his or her party and enough years of political goodwill to sustain a (presumably) minor controversy.
Please keep in mind that all of this is pure speculation on my part. But again, it seems quite a coincidence that Stetler and Smith both fit that profile exactly.
Yes, the public has a right, even a responsibility, to hold lawmakers responsible for their individual votes. I also believe the campaign in the wake of the pay raise to unseat every single incumbent in Harrisburg was naive and misguided.
Still, I think it's a shame that lawmakers such as Stetler and Smith had to bear the brunt of the consequences, when many other lawmakers who got off free may have been just as culpable.
I also think it's a shame, in light of their long years of service for their constituents, that Smith and Stetler both had to end their careers as state representatives on that note.
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