TEXT BY JACQUELINE C. GOODWIN Ed. D

Ever wonder what your legislator does for a living? That is, besides his regular job as a lawmaker? Well, wonder no more.

Ten newly elected freshman senators and house members are attorneys, with at least two of them managing partners of large law firms. They join a growing list of more than two dozen legislators who moonlight as lawyers, in addition to a large number of non-lawyer legislators who have outside jobs to help supplement their public salaries ranging from real estate to farming.

Pennsylvania’s legislators are the fourth highest paid in the land. They have an average annual salary of $78,314 a year, including an array of perks like cars, health insurance and expenses for every day they are in session. That ought to be enough to pay the bills, say critics. But many of Pennsylvania’s lawmakers still moonlight, making money on the side with full careers they never left. 

Legislators, in their defense, say their business or professional expertise makes them better legislators. Some believe they need to keep their businesses going so they’ll have something to return to when they leave office. Others say they need the extra income to meet bills and other expenses such as college tuition. “We struggle to put our kid through school and pay our bills just like everybody else,” says one veteran legislator.

But critics beg to differ. They say full-time legislators don’t have time to run a business. They point out that besides the time spent in Harrisburg, legislators must spend time in their districts engaged in “constituent work,” a wide-ranging category of activity without a common definition, which can run the gamut from handling driver’s license and vehicle registration applications to guiding major economic-development projects. And don’t forget a key part of their job is making the rounds of civic events in their districts on nights and weekends.

One legislator, Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, agrees. “I don’t know how anyone who takes this job seriously can have another part-time job. I’m there from 9 to 6 every day, besides attending events scheduled in the evening.”

Most folks agree that double careers may be perceived as evidence that legislators are cashing in on their influential positions. 

The Public Official and Employee Ethics Act that prohibits conflicts of interest, which it defines as the use of public office to achieve a “private pecuniary benefit,” not including actions that have a minor financial impact or affect all members of a class equally. But it defers to the constitution and legislative rules to establish voting procedures in cases of conflict. The constitution prohibits members from voting in conflicts of interest, but the legislative rules leave it up to presiding officers to decide when the prohibition should apply.

According to Article 3, Section 13 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, a lawmaker with a “personal or private interest in any measure or bill” must disclose it to the legislature and abstain from voting. 

In January, during a late night legislative session, the House voted unanimously in favor of a Republican-backed measure to prevent members from being paid by lobbying firms. Democrats had second thoughts and reversed the vote, arguing that the amendment violated the constitutional separation of powers by regulating the legal profession. 

After the reversal, House leaders were quick to note that there are no legislators among the state’s registered lobbyists. Attorney legislators also went to great lengths to point out that not all lawyers are lobbyists and not all law firms do lobbying. 

Legislators, themselves, voiced conflicting sentiments on the issue. Some characterized the proposed ban as “a surgical attempt to make some people look bad.” While others said if you’re employed by a firm that lobbys, that’s an inherent conflict of interest.

Over time, Pennsylvania’s “citizen” legislator, one who spent three months in the state capital to enact a state budget and six months of the next on general bills, using the time in between to tend to his own business in the next, became a rare breed. In 1969, a report by the Commission for Legislative Modernization, co-chaired by novelist James Michener, set the stage for transforming the General Assembly from a body of part-timers to one in which members consider themselves on the job full-time. 

Legislative leaders added session days, scheduled more public hearings, hired more staff, provided cars and offices at the Capitol and offered tax-payer vehicles for legislators to use while in transit. Their intent? To make the job of legislator full-time.

While voters never gave formal approval to this change, they did elect candidates who, for the most part, promised to be “full-time” legislators. So where does this leave the issue of moonlighting legislators? House leaders are trying to decide what they should do — if anything at all — about the issue. One member wants to limit all outside income, while others say the lobbying firm ban makes more sense. 

Others still continue to work outside jobs, while serving time as legislators. Yet, it’s a perfectly legal arrangement, even when those with outside sources of income could vote in ways that might seem like clear conflicts of interest. HBG