Is Gridlock Inevitable?
Pennsylvania’s legislators will be sworn in on January 7. Their first vote of the new session will be on legislative rules that limit their ability to represent constituents.
A new Fair Districts PA/ Fix Harrisburg report explains this reality while examining the outcome of the 2023–2024 legislative session. The report, a compendium of recent search by FDPA volunteers, asks “Did a divided government make an already dysfunctional legislative process even less functional?”
The document has been sent to PA legislators and press and is available to all online here.
Some legislative leaders have insisted that “quality, not quantity,” should be the measure of the General Assembly’s performance. By either measure, Pennsylvania’s full-time legislature accomplishes very little compared to many part-time assemblies.
The report looks at data from some neighboring states, reviews statistics across multiple sessions, and calls attention to bills passed unanimously in one chamber only to be ignored in the other. Yes, Pennsylvania had the only divided General Assembly in 2024. Yet even in years where one party controlled both chambers, Pennsylvania’s legislature underperformed in the work of passing legislation. In 2023, Virginia’s divided General Assembly session managed to pass 812 bills in just 3 months. Compare that to PA’s 239 bills, less than half, in two years of a full-time assembly.
As the report explains:
The current lawmaking process in Pennsylvania does not serve the public or PA’s legislators well. Many other state legislatures function more efficiently and cost-effectively, with less frustration and more success for legislators themselves, as well as the public. There are no constitutional or statutory barriers to a relevant, sensible legislative process, yet the Pennsylvania General Assembly regularly fails to enact laws that commissions, advisory boards, voters and legislators themselves know are needed.
Change is possible, but only if the PA public demands better representation and legislators insist on better rules.