From Fair Districts PA (http://www.fairdistrictspa.com):
On Monday, our PA legislature recessed for the summer without passing either of the redistricting reform bills that had the support of tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians and hundreds of municipalities.
Go to https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-pa-leadership-recall-legislators-to-harrisburg-to-pass-redistricting-reform to contact legislative leaders today – tell them their work is not done!
Rep. Dave Reed had scheduled SB 22 for consideration on the House floor last Friday. Rep. Steve Samuelson submitted an amendment (#A08876) that would have made SB 22 even stronger than the original, stripping out the highly controversial Aument amendment and adding some new safeguards.
We contacted our legislators to ask for a YES vote on the Samuelson amendment, confident it would receive strong support since 110 of our representatives had cosponsored the original HB 722. And, as of yesterday, the re-introduced version of 722 (HB 2402) was back up to 100 cosponsors – with six who had not had their names on the original.
But as the deadline for submitting amendments to SB 22 passed, it became clear that an avalanche of submissions would bury that effort. Of the over 600 amendments submitted, about 270 were from Rep. Matt Bradford (D) of Montgomery County, over 120 from Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R) of Butler County, 80 from Rep. Bill Keller (D) of Philadelphia, and over 20 each from Reps. Frankel, Vazquez and Paul Costa.
On Friday, the bill was removed from the House calendar due to the difficulty of processing the record number of amendments. Despite hundreds of requests from our supporters to both Representative Reed and Speaker Turzai, the House recessed Monday afternoon without considering any redistricting reform.
Of course we were disappointed and, to be honest, quite angry.
But this chapter isn’t over.
We’ve heard from Representative Reed’s staff and from his statements to the press that there are still efforts to come to consensus on a way to move this reform forward. Members of Rep. Reed’s staff are reading through amendments and legislative leaders are consulting. There’s still a small possibility that the House would return to vote on amendments and a bill, and that the Senate would then return for a vote of concurrence.
Your participation has made a big difference in keeping this effort alive and so we’re asking you once again to help make clear to our legislative leaders just how much this reform matters to us. We want to make our priorities clear by asking for support of the Samuelson amendment (#A08876). Many of you have already contacted your own legislators on this.
Now we’re focusing all our attention on the leaders who can make reform happen: Senators Scarnati, Corman and Costa, and Representatives Turzai, Reed and Dermody. Please, click on the link above to contact them today. Then share this action widely.
Let’s keep up the pressure!
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