Legislators could not use resources 60 days prior

On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee unanimously passed legislation prohibiting legislators from assisting their re-election efforts with taxpayer-funded newsletters.

Introduced by state Rep. Matthew Bradford (D–Montgomery), House Bill 2271, would make it a criminal offense for state House and Senate members to mail such newsletters to constituents within 60 days of an election at which their name is on the ballot. The practice is currently prohibited by House and Senate rules, but not illegal.

“Right now it’s important, especially with issues like this, to make sure these kind of reforms are initiated,” Mr. Bradford said. “My understanding is the House rules would cover this [but] this bill would obviously further sanction it by codifying it. It wouldn’t be permitted – on the back end it wouldn’t be paid for.”

Mr. Bradford noted the bill could apply to other forms of communication, such as so-called robo calls, whereby constituents receive recorded phone calls from legislators, and public service announcements on radio and television.

“We have been very critical for some period of time of them using things which are more politically oriented than public policy oriented,” said Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause. “If you get a newsletter from a politician and two-thirds is their name or face it’s not useful information. Actually, if it’s a public service there’s no reason you can’t use the same one instead of having customized ones for each candidates.”

Mr. Kauffman said of the House and Senate rules, “There’s some degree of self-enforcing. I know there were attempts to change the rules in the last few sessions to prohibit those very thinly disguised campaign ads [but] they never passed a law. What they did was put it in the rules and they often change the rules at the beginning of each session.”

The cost of postage for mailings by the House of Representatives totaled over $726,000 in fiscal year 2007-08, and a little less than $600,000 in fiscal year 2008-09. That’s an average of $2,956 and $3,576 for each representative. Information provided by House officials is unclear as to how much of those costs pertain to the much-criticized election-season newsletters versus other mailings.

Not included in these costs are printing and design. House officials’ response to a request for those costs states that since the House has its own facility for day-to-day operations, “the costs of the printing of pamphlets specifically associated with constituent mailings are … indeterminate.” For the abovementioned fiscal years, the House also outsourced additional printing to the tune of $45,854.

Yet another request for the cost of other taxpayer-funded items used widely by lawmakers for promotion—such as calendars and notepads embossed with lawmakers’ names and photos was met with the following response: “There is no annual budget for those items… the record does not exist.”

In comparison, the state Senate reported it spent over $1.8 million on advertising, printing, and postage in fiscal year 2007-2008 and more than $1.6 million in 2008-2009. Unlike the House, the Senate does not have a print shop. Requests for how much the House Republican Caucus spent from 2007-2009 on salaries and office supplies yielded costs of approximately $4.2 million and $2.9 million respectively.

The Senate Democrat Caucus said it was unable to provide a sum of all costs for each individual year.

Every year, legislators mail their constituents information on legislative issues and their activity in office. However, the lump sums are not itemized by constituent contact versus other use and hide the potential cost from Pennsylvanians on how much representatives are spending on contacting them, potentially for campaign purposes, versus work specifically for the legislature.

Mr. Bradford is seeking re-election for his House seat.