State Legislature: The PA General Assembly Handout #18

The Pennsylvania General Assembly is bicameral, meaning it is made up of two legislative houses: the PA Senate and the PA House of Representatives. All state legislatures in the United States are bicameral with the exception of Nebraska’s, which is unicameral and therefore has only one legislative house.

BASIC GENERAL ASSEMBLY INFORMATION:

50 Senatorselected to 4 year terms

203 Representatives (in the House of Representatives)elected to 2 year terms

Elections are held every two years.

PA legislators are paid much higher than the national average. (But also unlike many states, PA's legislature is considered a full time job which meets for most of the year.) The salary for PA legislators is over $76,000/year plus a generous benefits and expense package.

QUALIFICATIONS TO SERVE IN THE PA GENERAL ASSEMBLY:

Age: Senate -- must be 25 years old

House of Representatives -- must be 21 years old

Legislators must be a U.S. citizen, a resident of PA for at least four years before the election, and a resident of your electoral district. No one convicted of a major crime (murder, arson, embezzlement, robbery, etc.) can serve as a member of the General Assembly. No member can hold another office in the State government simultaneously -- one could build up too much power.

POWERS OF THE LEGISLATURE

Legislatures hold most of the power that is reserved to the states. While the complete list of powers given to the states is not spelled out, the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution empowers the legislature to enact a law on any matter unless powers over that issue are denied to the states by the U.S. Constitution or granted exclusively to the executive or judicial branches of the states under the state constitution. These are referred to as the Reserved Powers.

  1. Legislative powers include:
  2. Taxing, spending state money, and borrowing money
  3. Defining crimes and providing for their punishment
  4. Providing government services (including schools)
  5. Make rules about the operation of state government
  6. Regulating business activities
  7. Delegating authority to local government
  8. The General Assembly can also appointmembers of the governor's staff andimpeach (remove for misconduct) judges or other elected officials.
  9. They can also work on reshaping the state’s Constitution.

Legislative Leadership

Each house is run by someone called a Presiding Officerwho is chosen by a majority of members of that legislative house. Therefore the majority party picks these officers.

  • In the House of Representativesthis is the Speaker of the House (House members choosetheir own Speaker by a majority vote).
  • In the Senate there are two: the President of the Senate, who is always the Lieutenant Governor elected by the citizens of the state and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate(who the Senate selects from theirown members). The President Pro Tempore really leads the Senate for day to day matters.

In almost every state legislature, the presiding officer selects the chairpersons for committees and selects other committee members (often friends of the presiding officer are rewarded and enemies are punished.) Much of the decision making in the legislature is done behind the scenes in committees, so appointments to committees are very important and can convey a great deal of power.

Presiding officers also decide:

  • which committees to refer new bills to,
  • who to call upon next to speak during debates in the legislature,
  • and how to interpret the rules for their meetings, and
  • how they will personally cast their own votes on bills and other legislative actions.

Committees

Standing Committees: Permanent committees in either the House or the Senate that operate throughout the legislative session to review, hold hearings, and report to the floor on bills. These are the most basic and important types of committees. Every lawmaker will be a member of several committees.

The two main purposes of standing committees are as follows:

  • Committees provide expertise about a topic and can inform the rest of the legislature on the details and specifics surrounding the issues of their particular committee.
  • KILL BILLS!!! 1000's of pieces of legislation are submitted every year, in order to decide which ones will be given time for debate and which ones will not, they are sent to committees where decisions about which bills are the most important can be made.

Other Types of Legislative Committees:

  • Conference Committee: A group of legislators from the both the House and the Senate are appointed to resolve differences between House and Senate passed versions of a bill. They should create a compromise bill that hopefully can get approval from both houses.
  • Select Committee or Special Committee: Created to serve in either the House or the Senate regarding a specific purpose or issue. These committees exist only for a specified time limit before they are eliminated.
  • Joint Committee: Any committee that includes members from both Houses.
  • Interim Committee: Appointed to do specific work between legislative sessions – while the rest of the lawmakers have gone home.

DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE TYPICAL PA LEGISLATOR:

This is what the averagePennsylvanialegislator is like:

  • white male
  • college educated
  • mid-40s
  • upper middle class
  • Protestant
  • usually also self-employed businesspersons (most often lawyers, real estate brokers, or insurance agents)

Recent counts of Pennsylvanialegislators showed that, out of our253 state legislators:

  • As of 2008, there wereonly thirty-seven women. (PA ranks 43rd among states for the number of female lawmakers.)
  • As of the last count there were only eighteen African-Americans and only one Latino..