24 hour victories

When defending civil liberties at a state legislature that is hostile to them, we have to hang our hat on all victories, no matter how small, even if they last just a few months, a few weeks, or even 24 hours.

Yesterday had the potential to be a rough day at the PA General Assembly, particularly in the House. Somehow we came out of it almost completely unscathed.

Voter ID, HB 934: We expected the House to vote on final passage. It never happened. The House adjourned abruptly just after 4pm without a vote on the bill. Also, more good news on this front yesterday. The AARP of Pennsylvania sent a letter to all House members expressing their opposition.

I still expect this bill to get a vote today or at least before the summer recess. But we'll take victories where we can get them. Rep. Mike Sturla of Lancaster had some insight on the two week delay of this bill earlier this month:

House GOP leaders delayed this bill as long as they could, but, needing budget votes from the Paranoid Delusional faction within the Republican Caucus, we now find ourselves devoting hours to debating a voter suppression bill, rather than, you know, discussing a state budget.

ID for aid, SB 9: More "papers, please" legislation. This bill denies public aid to anyone who is unable to produce government-issued ID. The House State Government Committee was expected to take up this bill but instead held it over. The bill will be part of a series of hearings the committee is going to hold over the summer on immigration issue. Mind you, without credible evidence of ineligible persons receiving benefits, it's not an immigration issue at all but is, instead, a poverty issue.

Publicly-funded private school vouchers, SB 1/HB 1708: There were some signs that a compromise on school vouchers might be jammed through before the legislature finishes the state budget, which is due June 30. On Tuesday, the House Education Committee posted notice of hearings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday on this issue. But the Democratic chairman of the committee, Rep. James Roebuck of West Philly, objected because the notice did not follow House rules on sunshining a hearing. To his credit, the majority chairman, Rep. Paul Clymer of Bucks County, agreed and promptly cancelled both hearings.

There was some bad news...

Abortion coverage in the insurance exchanges created by healthcare reform, SB 3: We got crushed. This bill was voted out of the House Insurance Committee on a vote of 22-2. The legislature is struggling to finish the budget by the June 30 deadline (and completely missed their own goal of finishing it by the end of May) but has plenty of time to deal with abortion, apparently.

The war on the poor continues: Drug tests for public aid

The war on the poor has been opened up on multiple fronts- in Washington, DC, and in state capitols around the country, including Harrisburg. Just at the ACLU, we've been addressing the U.S. House's proposal to cut family planning funding, including to our friends at Planned Parenthood, where many people with lower incomes go for a wide variety of services. And in Harrisburg, we're dealing with Senate Bill 9, mandating government-issued identification for public aid. (There's more on our opposition to this bill here.)

And those are just a few issues that fall within the ACLU's mission. Our friends at allied organizations are dealing with this full on assault in a broader way.

Today we had another reminder of how easy it is for the powerful to go after the vulnerable. Last week a bipartisan group of nine state senators introduced Senate Bill 719. This bill would implement random drug testing for people who receive cash assistance. At least two media outlets are exploring the issue since one of the senators issued a press release.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania's opposition to this bill can be summed up in three words- ineffective, expensive, and unconstitutional.

Ineffective. Statistics from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism have found that the rate of drug use among public aid recipients is no different from the general population. SB 719 singles out this particular population for extra scrutiny.

Expensive. Drug testing is expensive. It requires financial resources to give the tests, ensure confidentiality, and to run checks to guard against false positives from prescription drugs and other legal substances, like poppy seeds. Numerous states have cited costs as the reason for not starting such a program.

The federal government has a drug testing program for its employees. It found that it spends $77,000 for every one positive drug test because so few people test positive.

Unconstitutional. A drug test is a search, and under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the government cannot conduct this type of broad-based search. The government must have reason to suspect a person is using illegal substances before mandating a drug test.

Michigan is the one state where a law like SB 719 passed. It was struck down by the court of appeals for the reasons cited above.

I'm not a fan of using violent language like "war" or "assault," but the types of initiatives that lawmakers are now pursuing suggest nothing less than an all-out war on the poor. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail in the PA Senate, and SB 719 will go nowhere fast.

Next week at the state capitol

Next week will be a big week at the state capitol as Governor Corbett gives his first budget address, a proposal that his budget secretary has suggested would be a "day of reckoning."

But on the civil liberties front, it appears all should be relatively quiet, for a change. Several bills in which we have an interest have been re-referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee, including Senate Bill 3, banning insurance coverage for abortion in the insurance exchanges created by healthcare reform, and Senate Bill 9, requiring government-issued ID for public aid. Bills expanding the controlled substances law are currently on the tabled calendar, and SB 1, the school vouchers bill, is expected to go to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Though the legislature is always full of surprises, no committees are scheduled to vote on civil liberties-related bills.

The biggest potential threat this week is House Bill 317, which adds two new aggravating circumstances for capital cases. It would bring the total number of aggravating circumstances, i.e. circumstances in a homicide that could lead to the death penalty, to 20. At a time when Illinois and Montana are considering repeal of the death penalty, followed on the heels of repeal by New York, New Jersey, and New Mexico, this bill actually expands the death penalty here in PA.

It's possible that HB 317 could get a vote next week. One would think it would go to the House Appropriations Committee before getting a floor vote since the death penalty has proven to be a very expensive government program. But one never knows at the capitol.

After next week, the legislature breaks for several weeks for budget hearings. (Yes, I'm already thinking about the days off I'll be taking this month.) Ah, but civil liberties will still be on the docket this month, as the House Democratic Policy Committee will hold several hearings on school vouchers and the House State Government Committee will hold hearings on ID to vote (on March 21) and on a resolution asking the federal government to address concerns raised over TSA airport searches (on March 30).

In between, I'll be getting some rest. It will really crank up in April.

This Week at the State Capitol

This is a new feature I'm hoping to start doing on a regular basis, giving you a preview of what's going on at the state capitol. Although I'm doing this one on Monday, look for it late in the week before a session week, though I don't want to interfere with Chris's awesome Friday First Amendment Roundup.

This week promises to provide hours and hours of non-stop entertainment.

Talk Talk:
Monday, February 14, 12:30pm, Main Rotunda
Marriage Equality Press Conference
Marriage equality legislation, delivered just in time for Valentine's Day! Senator Daylin Leach has introduced Senate Bill 461 to allow lesbian and gay couples to join the institution of marriage and all of the benefits that go with it. Rep. Mark Cohen will introduce a civil unions on the House side. Polling indicates that either marriage or civil unions for same sex couples is supported by 65% of Pennsylvanians.

Tuesday, February 15, 9am, Hearing Room 1, North Office Building
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on cost-cutting measures in criminal justice
Despite the legislation passed last session, there is still plenty of work to be done. Pennsylvania still has a deep mandatory minimum sentencing scheme that needs rolled back, and programs that should help alleviate the prison population, like State Intermediate Punishment and the Recidivism Risk Reduction Initiative, have restrictions that make those programs ineffective. Meanwhile, the state is spending $800 million to build four new state prisons.

Wednesday, February 16, 9:15am, Hearing Room 1, North Office Building
Senate Education Committee hearing on Senate Bill 1
Welcome to the main event! SB 1 provides state-funded vouchers to low-income students to use at private, parochial, or other public schools. SB 1 violates three provisions of the state constitution that bar funding to sectarian schools, sectarian institutions, and schools that are not under the absolute control of the commonwealth. SB 1 also gives state funds to private and religious schools that can and do discriminate against kids for a variety of reasons, including disability, sexual orientation and gender identity or expression, and an inability to speak English. Public schools, meanwhile, take everyone.

I don't have our testimony posted on our website yet but will have it up at our legislative page by Wednesday. Meanwhile, you can learn more about vouchers from our friends at the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and at the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

I often tweet when I'm at these events, so be sure to follow us @aclupa.

Rock the Vote?
Three bills on which the ACLU of PA has a position are currently on the Senate calendar. These bills could get a vote any day or might go to the Senate Appropriations Committee for fiscal considerations:

• Senate Bill 3: We oppose. Bans insurance companies from offering abortion coverage within the insurance exchanges created by the federal government's healthcare reform. A woman who spends her own money on coverage couldn't get it within the exchange if SB 3 becomes law. We expect this bill will detour to the Senate Appropriations Committee before getting a vote sometime in the future. The Patriot News and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette have both editorialized on this bill.
  
• Senate Bill 9: We oppose. Requires applicants for public aid to show government-issued ID or be denied. Supporters claim they're stopping people without papers from fraudulently getting aid but show no evidence that that's a problem. Meanwhile, academic analysis suggests as much as 11 percent of US citizens do not have government-issued ID. This bill should go to approps since multiple state agencies estimated in 2008 that SB 9 would cost the commonwealth $19 million to implement.
• Senate Bill 42: We oppose. Shrinks the time frame in which persons who have committed sex offenses have to report certain changes, e.g. change in employment, to the state from 10 days to 2 days. It also treats a violation like a felony crime, not like a parole violation. Seriously, aren't we just setting these people up for failure?

Info about SB 3 and SB 9 is available at our legislative webpage.

Rock the committee vote
Since the war on drugs has been such a roaring success (/snark), the House Judiciary Committee will vote on three bills to expand the drug laws to add new substances- Spice et al, aka "synthetic marijuana"; Salvia Divinorum; and some chemical compounds I cannot pronounce.

So PA is building four new prisons at a cost of $800 million due to a bursting inmate population that has been caused in large part to the extreme sentencing laws for drug offenses we've implemented. And now we're going to add more substances to the list of what's illegal......If you continuously bang your head against a wall, at some point don't you realize that it won't make your headache go away?

Welcome to my world.....

Then they came for immigrants and poor people....

Two weeks ago, we told you that the first bill to get a committee vote in the state Senate was Senate Bill 3, to roll back women's access to abortion care. Today we learned that immigrants and poor people are next on the Senate's list.

The Senate State Government Committee today passed Senate Bill 9, requiring applicants for many public aid programs to show government-issued identification, with some exceptions. I wrote about this bill last week, so there's no need to rehash our arguments.

But there is a genuine level of disappointment here about the direction the Senate is heading when the first two bills to come out of committee restrict women's access to healthcare and restrict citizens' access to social safety net programs like unemployment compensation. Who and what is next? LGBT people? Prisoners? Voting rights? Apparently, the budget deficit, the economy, and government reform are nowhere on the radar screen, based on these first few weeks. If this keeps up, we're in for a bumpy session.

Update, 3:05pm: Factual error on my part. About an hour before the committee vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed seven bills, so SB 9 wasn't the second bill out of committee this session in the Senate. Still, the point is the same.

Let's do the time warp again!

(I do realize that I've mixed my movie references. Just go with it.)

A friend of the ACLU of PA from an ally organization has said publicly that the state legislature is typically ten years behind the rest of the country. We can quibble over just how far behind the General Assembly is, but his point is well taken.

Early in the 2011-12 session, we've already had two reminders that our legislators are behind the times.

House Bill 41/Senate Bill 9: These pieces of legislation would require an applicant for public aid to show a government-issued identification before receiving that aid. Currently, most applicants show ID, but if they do not have it, the issuing department will work with them to get other records to establish ID.

The bill is framed as a way to stop people without papers from getting public aid, but there is no evidence that is actually happen. There is plenty of evidence, though, that a significant percentage of the citizen population does not have government-issued ID. According to the Brennan Center at NYU, 11 percent of US citizens do not have government-issued ID, and they are disproportionately the elderly, the working poor, and black adults. (pdf)

Colorado tried this in 2006 and lost money doing it. The state spent $2 million to implement the program and didn't save any money. Since then, some states have altered their verification process but without the ID requirement.

But here in PA the supporters of HB 41 and SB 9 continue to plow forward. Oh, and the Rendell administration estimated that these bills would cost $19 million to implement.

House Bill 308: At least with HB 41 and SB 9, what we've learned from other states is a relatively new phenomenon. When it comes to the death penalty, some of our state legislators are stuck in 1996.

House Bill 308 addresses capital cases in which the jury does not reach a unanimous verdict on the sentence. Under current law, if the jury is not unanimous, the judge implements a sentence of life without parole. This happened in a recent trial in Philadelphia in which the defendant was convicted of killing a police officer. Seven jurors wanted life and five wanted death.

HB 308 is the response to that trial. This bill would require a court to seat a new jury to hear another penalty phase argument. There is a mountain of evidence that shows that the death penalty is more costly than even life without parole. In the last three years, New Jersey and New Mexico repealed capital punishment, in part due to its large financial burden, and the Illinois legislature has passed a repeal bill, which awaits the governor's signature.

If HB 308 becomes law, it would only add to that huge payout that the commonwealth pays for the privilege (?) of maintaining the death penalty.

California has a law like this. It drags out the capital trial process, and it is expensive and painful to victims' families. The LA Times recently featured a story on the mother and grandmother of murder victims who is struggling to continue through the trial process and wants the prosecution to stop pursuing death. She just wants it to end.

They say adults have to hear something seven times before they learn it. Clearly, we advocates have our work cut out for us in bringing our legislators into this decade.