Highlight PA is an unbiased, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-Information, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Assessment, and WITF Public Media. Join our free newsletters.

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Democrats used the primary full week of the session since they solidified their majority within the state Home to make their priorities clear: They intend to move long-requested modifications to election administration and antidiscrimination legal guidelines.

Committees within the Home thought of dozens of payments final week, and despatched greater than 40 to the ground for votes by the total chamber. Democrats argue that the half-dozen GOP-sponsored proposals they included in that blitz present they intend to run the chamber in a bipartisan means.

“All payments, whether or not launched by a Democrat or Republican, will probably be thought of if they’ve a constructive influence on Pennsylvania,” mentioned Beth Rementer, spokesperson for Home Majority Chief Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery).

Nonetheless, the most important proposals symbolize prime priorities for Democrats alone and superior out of committee in party-line votes. These embody a proposal to ban sexual orientation discrimination in housing, employment, and all different public lodging, laws that has been launched and shut down in Harrisburg for 22 years.

Advocates across the Capitol expressed hope that not all these precedence payments will get a very partisan reception on the ground. However Democrats say that after a decade-plus of being stymied within the minority, they really feel emboldened to reply to their base.

“We’d protest and have occasions in the primary rotunda about payments that had been very talked-about with the general public, and they’d go nowhere in Harrisburg,” State Rep. Kevin Boyle (D., Philadelphia), who chairs the Home Insurance coverage Committee, informed Highlight PA. “So I believe the duty is on the likes of me to make it possible for these measures are handed out of committee after which in the end, move our state Home.”

Learn on for Highlight PA’s rundown of key payments that present Home Democrats’ early priorities, and what they are saying about the best way this session might unfold.

Election administration

A prime precedence for county directors bought a lift final week when the Pennsylvania Home State Authorities Committee accepted a invoice that will give counties seven days earlier than every election to open and put together mail ballots for a ultimate depend on Election Day. That course of is often often known as pre-canvassing.

It handed with none assist from the Republicans on the committee, and state Senate Republicans have already indicated they received’t approve it with out vital modifications.

Votebeat beforehand reported that the invoice would additionally permit counties to just accept mail ballots which are undated or lack a secrecy envelope, a so-called bare poll. As well as, it could require counties to contact voters who forgot to signal the outer envelope of their mail poll in order that they’ve an opportunity to repair it.

One other change below the invoice is that voters would have 4 fewer days to remotely request a mail poll — tightening the timeline from per week earlier than Election Day to the second Friday earlier than an election. That change matches a standard demand from counties for extra time to show round poll requests.

The invoice’s ultimate language additionally included a provision that will let voters request a mail poll in particular person at their county election workplace till the day earlier than Election Day. That addition raised considerations with the County Commissioners Affiliation of Pennsylvania, which represents election staff.

“Any profit counties would see … by pre-canvassing within the seven days earlier than is more likely to be undermined by including workload, together with processing last-minute updates to ballot books, throughout the very same time,” mentioned Lisa Schaefer, govt director of the affiliation, in a press release.

Different curiosity teams are additionally weighing in. Voting rights advocates have argued that pre-canvassing is a naked minimal replace to the legislation, and hope to see Democrats broaden poll entry by approving modifications akin to same-day voter registration and in-person early voting.

As for the GOP-controlled state Senate, they’ve made clear they count on an expanded voter ID legislation to be a part of the election dialog. Senate GOP spokesperson Kate Flessner informed Votebeat this week that the availability is “a key part” of any “holistic” election invoice.

Threading that needle is now as much as new Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and the divided legislature — a tall order, however one which State Rep. Scott Conklin (D., Centre), who chairs the Home State Authorities Committee, mentioned have to be tried.

“After 25 years of being elected, I discovered that not everyone all the time will get precisely what they need,” Conklin mentioned. “But when we will come shut and do one thing that’s good for the general public, that’s an important factor.”

LGBTQ nondiscrimination

After 22 years of repeated introduction and inaction within the legislature, a invoice that will ban discrimination in opposition to LGBTQ individuals acquired a committee vote Monday.

LGBTQ individuals who imagine that they’ve been fired or denied one other service on the idea of their sexual orientation can already file a criticism with the Human Relations Fee due to a Dec. 2022 administrative change pushed by former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

That coverage relies upon the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court docket ruling Bostock v. Clayton County, which discovered that the definition of “intercourse” in federal legislation contains sexual orientation and gender id.

Republicans, who unanimously voted in opposition to the nondiscrimination invoice in committee, pointed to the ruling and the state rule change to argue the proposal was pointless.

In addition they introduced up considerations that trans people would lodge complaints in opposition to docs who refused to supply gender-affirming care, or in opposition to home violence shelters that refused to host them.

However Democrats countered that the absence of a state legislation leaves Pennsylvania’s present nondiscrimination rule susceptible to being overridden if the federal ruling is ever reversed.

“We speak about unintended penalties, however let’s speak about actual penalties after we don’t have a state legislation that protects all LGBTQ Pennsylvanians,” mentioned state Rep. La’Tasha Mayes (D., Allegheny).

Throughout his marketing campaign, Shapiro mentioned making such a change was a prime precedence and that he would “use my political capital” to get it performed.

Public sector office security

Even throughout Republicans’ years of management of the Basic Meeting, organized labor all the time held sway inside the halls of the Capitol. When the GOP set the agenda, that affect might be seen in unions’ profitable lobbying efforts in opposition to payments they opposed, akin to a measure that will have ended the automated deduction of union political contributions from public paychecks.

However with Democrats setting the voting calendar, organized labor, which contributed {dollars} and man energy to Democrats’ election efforts, now has an opportunity to additional its priorities.

“It’s clear that the present Democratic majority within the Home is a pro-worker majority, and we’ll proceed to work with them on insurance policies that enhance the lives of AFSCME members and all working individuals in Pennsylvania,” mentioned David Henderson, who heads Pennsylvania’s AFSCME Council 13, which represents greater than 65,000 staff within the commonwealth.

A kind of insurance policies superior this week, because the state Home Labor and Business Committee handed a invoice that will create a board to watch public sector workplaces for security violations and levy fines of as much as $10,000 for noncompliance. It’s now earlier than the total chamber.

The board would additionally oversee working circumstances at any nonprofit, charity, or different personal group “receiving grants or appropriations from Federal, State or native authorities.”

A examine commissioned by Wolf in 2022 to estimate the price of implementing public sector office security requirements discovered it could take $54.8 million to carry state authorities workplaces into compliance with such a legislation.

The invoice is opposed by associations representing plenty of native authorities our bodies, together with counties, cities, townships, and municipal authorities, which referred to as for a whole examine of office accidents and deaths earlier than implementing a board.

“The expenditures [the bill] would entail, each in diversion of native funds and the price to the commonwealth of building and sustaining an enormous new regulatory regime, needs to be devoted as an alternative to many different urgent and pressing wants,” they mentioned in testimony on the invoice final month.

In response to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, no less than 4 nonfederal authorities staff died on the job in 2021, the latest full 12 months for which there are knowledge.

Gun entry

One of the contentious conferences of lawmakers’ Wednesday session was within the state Home Judiciary Committee, the place Democrats put up a slate of payments solely associated to gun violence. Each vote within the committee handed alongside occasion strains, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans voting in opposition to.

This marks a major change within the committee, which below Republican management has for years refused to think about laws that will tighten gun legal guidelines.

Most not too long ago, the previous GOP chief of the committee, state Rep. Rob Kauffman (R., Franklin) blocked gun management payments that Democrats tried to push via final June after a college taking pictures in Uvalde, Texas, killed almost 19 college students and two lecturers.

The committee handed payments that will require gun homeowners to report misplaced or stolen firearms, mandate background checks for all firearms, set up protected storage guidelines, and permit a decide to quickly take away an individual’s firearms if legislation enforcement or members of the family deem them in disaster — generally often known as a “crimson flag” legislation.

Republicans repeatedly raised considerations in regards to the invoice’s enforceability, with the majority of their questioning centered on the main points of the “crimson flag” laws.

State Rep. Joe Hamm (R., Sullivan) questioned whether or not the judges who could be charged with ordering an individual’s firearms to be quickly seized would have the coaching vital to find out whether or not that particular person was a danger, and argued that the invoice might have an effect on “law-abiding gun homeowners.”

“There are a lot of high-quality judges, however there are definitely others who I might say … shouldn’t be listening to these kinds of circumstances as a result of they don’t have the expertise,” Hamm mentioned.

State Rep. Darisha Parker (D., Philadelphia), who sponsored the protected storage invoice, mentioned that whatever the destiny of the payments on the Home flooring, Democrats needed to advance stricter gun legal guidelines to sign to their voters that they take the problem significantly.

And with a key particular election approaching in suburban Philadelphia subsequent month that would make or break the occasion’s maintain on the decrease chamber, Parker mentioned that Democratic voters want proof that their representatives can accomplish prime priorities.

“Now I can return to my neighborhood and say, ‘That is one in all many issues I ran on, mentioned we’d do, and along with your assist we will get them performed,’” Parker informed Highlight PA.

Brandon Flood, deputy director of advocacy group CeaseFire PA, added that though he believed that there have been some helpful coverage discussions within the committee assembly, some lawmakers’ complaints in regards to the gun management payments appeared purely partisan.

“I don’t need to impugn anybody’s character, however definitely it looks like people weren’t solutions-based versus nitpicking,” Flood mentioned. “Hopefully I’m fallacious about that.”

WHILE YOU’RE HERE … In case you realized one thing from this story, pay it ahead and turn into a member of Highlight PA so another person can sooner or later at spotlightpa.org/donate. Highlight PA is funded by foundations and readers such as you who’re dedicated to accountability journalism that will get outcomes.