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For Immediate Release
 August 1, 2005 WERE VULNERABLE SEATS PROTECTED? OCS STUDY PROVIDES EVIDENCE Link between duration of incumbency and
pay raise votes shown
Operation Clean Sweep, a non-partisan movement aimed at replacing every Pennsylvania legislator facing re-election in 2006, today released the results of a study showing a link between lawmakers' duration of incumbency in the General Assembly and their votes on the recent legislative pay hike. The results, available online at http://www.pacleansweep.com/vulnerable.html,
show a remarkable tendency among freshman and sophomore legislators to
lean toward a "no" vote while senior legislators and leadership voted
overwhelmingly in favor of increasing their own compensation by 16 to 34
percent.
Overall, only 32.9 percent of lawmakers
with less than six years in office voted for the pay raise. By contrast,
every state senator with 16 or more years in office and 92.5 percent of
all lawmakers with 21-25 years in office voted to enrich themselves with a
resounding "yes." 60.3 percent of lawmakers with 11-16 years in Harrisburg
and 79.3 percent of those with 16-20 years in office also voted in the
affirmative.
"What these results point to is a
two-pronged problem," said Operation Clean Sweep founder Russ Diamond. "We
have legislative leaders who are obviously out of touch with the
realities most Pennsylvanians face
on a day to day basis - and rank and file members who, even if they claim
their vote was based on principle, are apparently too worried about their
own personal security to stand up and openly challenge leadership based on those principles."
"We've heard no reports of lawmakers
resigning in disgust. We've heard no lawmaker publicly criticize
leadership for the way the raise was put to a vote without debate or
public hearing. We're not aware of any lawmaker who went before the
cameras immediately after the vote to complain about the process. These
are the things a principled legislator would do. It is our opinion that
these votes were simply pre-arranged in a fashion designed to protect the
most vulnerable incumbents."
The Operation Clean Sweep website, www.pacleansweep.com, had over
22,000 unique visitors since it was launched two weeks ago. 1175 outraged
taxpayers have signed up to receive regular OCS Alerts via email, 260
visitors have joined the online OCS discussion group, and 33 OCS County
Coordinators representing 20 counties have volunteered to steer local
grassroots activities in their areas.
The group's aim is to provide qualified
challengers for all 228 lawmakers up for re-election next year in both the
primary and general elections. To date, five candidates have signed the
OCS Declaration, which binds candidates to a pledge to repeal the pay
raise, subject future legislative pay raises to voter approval and enact a
ten-day "cooling off" period for all legislation once they take office.
OCS Candidates also agree to place all other philosophical and political
differences in a secondary role to these objectives.
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