From Quid Pro Quo to Quid Pro No! The Decades-Long Battle to Ban Bribery in Pennsylvania
On April 20th, community-powered lobbyists from MarchOnHarrisburg returned to the PA State Capitol to lobby our legislators to pass a Gift Ban bill and outlaw the often unspoken, yet ever-present pay-to-play culture of corruption in the State Capitol. If this feels like deja vu, you’re not wrong - we’ve been relentlessly campaigning for a Gift Ban every year since 2017 -that’s 1638 days of advocating for this basic, commonsense, and widely popular reform.
During the past four years of our Gift Ban campaign, legislators have all agreed in conversations with us that bribery is wrong and that Pennsylvania needs a Gift Ban. But time and time again, those same legislators have failed to make the Gift Ban law. Why? We’ve heard Harrisburg politicians say it all, from the slimy - “I can’t sign onto the Gift Ban because I have a mortgage to pay,” - to the blunt - “Legislators like perks.”
This year, however, we’re more optimistic than ever that a Gift Ban bill will pass and that bribing legislators in Pennsylvania will finally be illegal. There is momentum in the House and the Senate too. In the words of one GOP Senator, “Let us make 2021 the year of reform.” Our community-powered lobbyists are hard at work to make sure that the Gift Ban bill that passes will be as strong as possible.
When the Gift Ban is signed into law, it will be the culmination of not only years of advocacy by MarchOnHarrisburg, but also by other anti-corruption advocates who demanded action for decades before us.
Here’s a look back on the history of the Gift Ban, and our road to a democracy that represents the needs of the people in Pennsylvania.
The Journey of the Gift Ban
Some form of a Gift Ban has been introduced every legislative session for decades. Common Cause PA made a push back in the 1990s, and Rock the Capitol tried to force the issue throughout the 2000s, documenting all attempts to pass a Gift Ban from 2006-2014. In 2014, after scandals of gift-giving made headlines across the state, Common Cause PA renewed their Gift Ban efforts, and Rock the Capitol even attempted to “bribe” the legislature to pass Gift Ban legislation. The scandals prompted PennLive to poll their readers in 2014 asking if a Gift Ban was needed, and of 302 responses, 94% agreed that lobbyists shouldn’t be able to gift our legislators anything. MarchOnHarrisburg has since picked up the torch and carried it forward, prioritizing the reform from our first legislative campaign and every session since.
Our core MarchOnHarrisburg team started meeting in 2016 because we had all run into the ‘money wall’ while fighting for issues that were close to us: The wall of lobbyists, donors, and party bosses preventing progress on everything from education funding to healthcare to gun violence. We decided that the Gift Ban would be part of our first campaign, alongside our campaigns to end gerrymandering and expand voting rights.
In January 2017, our network of volunteers kicked off our first lobbying campaign, traveling to the State Capitol every week to speak to legislators about why their constituents don’t trust their government and ask for their support on HB39, the first Gift Ban bill we lobbied for. We formed relationships, we broke down barriers of intimidation in the People’s House by empowering working-class individuals to speak in rooms normally reserved for wealthy lobbyists, and we demanded a seat at the negotiating table. Quickly and constantly, we ran into brick walls of corruption and the obstructionists who build them. Despite dozens of requests, former House State Government Committee Chairman Daryl Metcalfe refused to even meet with our volunteers and his own constituents to talk about the Gift Ban. As the committee chairman, he had the power to bottleneck our bills and block all progress (see how a bill becomes a law here), and it was clear that escalated action would be necessary.
In May 2017, we marched from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, to demand a vote on HB39, the Gift Ban. After marching 115 miles, 28 activists were arrested over three days of nonviolent direct action inside the Capitol building. We disrupted Rep. Metcalfe’s annual ‘Make the Second Amendment Great Again’ rally with a banner drop in the rotunda, blocked the hallway outside his office, disrupted his committee hearings, and occupied his office. We then gave him gifts like cake (because we wanted to simply ‘break bread’ with him), coffee mugs (so he would wake up and smell the corruption), and purple flowers (because we are nonpartisan). We put the entire Legislature on notice that we were serious about making corruption illegal, and that we are not going anywhere.
In November 2017, after marching 36 miles from Lancaster to Harrisburg, five activists dressed as the character “Waldo'' from “Where’s Waldo?” were arrested in the main Capitol hallway while blocking traffic in the State Capitol Building to illustrate how our Legislature was hiding from us. Knowing that our march was scheduled to arrive, Former Speaker Turzai canceled that week’s legislative session without explanation to avoid discussing the Gift Ban and other anti-corruption measures. A week later, we occupied Rep. Metcalfe's’s office and 12 people were arrested for confronting the committee chairman with the truth that his protection of corruption is both blasphemous and immoral. These actions shifted the moral narrative in Harrisburg and put pressure on House leadership and the Senate to act.
In the winter and spring of 2018, we barnstormed across Pennsylvania, holding events in 20 cities from Erie to Philadelphia and building support for the Gift Ban while growing the statewide infrastructure necessary to win the democracy that we need. We developed leaders and seven chapters across the Commonwealth. In May 2018, as part of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, we engaged in six weeks of nonviolent direct action at the State Capitol and established the Gift Ban campaign as an interconnected part of the much larger moral fusion movement toward justice.
We lobbied with intensity in the winter of 2019 behind our re-introduced Gift Ban bill, HB1291, and in the spring of 2019, we marched again from Philadelphia to Harrisburg. Upon arrival at the Capitol, on May 6, twelve activists were arrested outside of the State Capitol Building during a sit-in with dollar bills marked, ‘bribe,’ taped across their mouths, while sitting beneath a banner that read, “$$ Silences Us.” While those democracy warriors were being taken away, eight anti-corruption activists were arrested inside the House Chamber for dropping 500 dollar bills marked “bribe,” while chanting, “Some are guilty; all are responsible,” and “Pass the Gift Ban, stop taking bribes.” Immediately following our action, Speaker Turzai, the most powerful Legislator in the House, signed onto our Gift Ban bill. A few weeks later, then-House State Government Committee Chairman Garth Everett introduced his own Gift Ban, HB1945, which Speaker Turzai and the majority of the State Government Committee immediately co-sponsored.
In May 2019, a story broke from the Associated Press illustrating exactly why our efforts to force lawmakers in Pennsylvania to pass the Gift Ban were needed. The story detailed how much Pennsylvania state lawmakers took in bribes in 2018— accepting more than $83,000 in the form of a variety of gifts, booze, free meals, and even trips to Taiwan, Israel, and Florida from various lobbyists.
On October 30, 2019, the House Government Oversight Committee issued a report detailing how broken our gift reporting system is, showing that in 2018, legislators reported receiving less than $40,000, while lobbyists had reported giving almost $1.5 million.
On November 19, 2019, just two and a half years after we started our campaign, HB1945 passed out of the State Government Committee because of our advocacy! Our volunteers packed the hearing and showed the Committee that Pennsylvanians want a Gift Ban.
In the winter of 2020, the Gift Ban bill was making its way to the House floor when the pandemic began, and the Gift Ban, unfortunately, was pushed off the House agenda.
On September 29th, 2020 MarchOnHarrisburg activists confronted House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff over the course of three days and demanded that he bring HB1945, the Gift Ban, to a vote before the end of the legislative session. Our volunteers staged a dramatic presentation outside Rep. Benninghoff’s office to let legislators know: Each day that passes by without a vote, there is blood on the hands of Pennsylvania legislators. During the demonstration, actors portrayed the corruption-fueled indifference that prevents legislators from responding to the crisis of Pennsylvanians, and threw blood money around the House Majority Leader’s office.
The next day, September 30th, we took our protests a step closer to the politician with the power to call a vote on the House floor,and we headed to Rep. Benninghoff’s Harrisburg residence with fresh coffee, donuts, and an invitation to talk about a simple question inspired by the popular “Change My Mind” meme: “Why Isn’t the Gift Ban Already Law?”
Then on October 1st, we organized constituents in his district office and protested once more, attempting to bribe the Majority Leader with $1.02: We gave him our two cents and quoted Article 1 Section 2 of the Pennsylvania State Constitution, which declares that “All power is inherent in the people.” Rep. Benninghoff later informed us that he would support the gift ban and work to pass it.
Where We Are Now
While House and Senate Leadership have been meeting to negotiate an ethics package that they will hopefully pass into law, MarchOnHarrisburg chapters have been working with key House and Senate committee members, leadership, and staffers to shape the negotiations and the bill into strong legislation, and to pass it into law.
The Gift Ban is a wildly popular bill. Nobody outside of the State Capitol in Harrisburg thinks it is appropriate for the wealthy to legally bribe our politicians. But public opinion doesn’t matter in Harrisburg. If it did, our government would be working overtime to respond to the multitude of crises in our state. Instead, they offer hollow words and little action. Last session, they passed six times more nonbinding resolutions (1,670) than they did actual laws (286).
The Legislature currently works for the lobbyists and their donors, and not for the people of Pennsylvania. We have the ability to take on and solve our housing crisis, our healthcare crisis, our jobs and wages crises, our education crisis, our systemic racism crisis, our infrastructure crisis, our environmental crisis, and all the corruption-fueled crises that cause violence and suffering in our Commonwealth. To make Harrisburg responsive to what the public needs, we need to make corruption illegal and take our democracy where it has never been before.
We are inches away from pushing the Gift Ban bill over the finish line. You can help make it happen by contacting Sen. David Argall and Sen. Jake Corman. Visit giftban.org for contact info, call scripts, Letter to the Editor resources, and more.
For those who can gather in person safely, we’re mobilizing across the state to pass the gift ban into law! On May 14th we’re engaging in state-wide community-powered billboarding. You can learn more and RSVP here.
We’re also organizing escalating nonviolent direct actions in Centre County and Harrisburg to pressure Senate President Jake Corman to get the Gift Ban onto Governor Wolf’s desk, where he has guaranteed he will sign it into law. Join us for a virtual Zoom event on May 20th at 6:30 PM to learn more about participating in these actions. RSVP here to receive the Zoom info. Please invite anyone and everyone you know who wants to join the fight for democracy!
To everyone who has volunteered, organized, lobbied, risked arrest, marched, or donated to the cause of democracy: Thank you. Thank you for consistently showing up to make corruption illegal. We would not be this close to passing the Gift Ban without each and every one of you.
Together, we will take our democracy where it’s never been before.