"I've come to the conclusion that a smaller number of members would make the House more manageable," Smith told a room packed with reporters, lawmakers, and lobbyists as he sketched his caucus' agenda for the next legislative session.
His comments received favorable reviews from a key figure in the state Senate. "It's only a question of how much smaller," Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi said Thursday.
But as others who have tried before him can attest, wanting to get this seemingly sensible thing done and actually getting it done are two very different things in Harrisburg.
The idea of downsizing the legislature has, in the last five years, become a kind of battle cry for those who say Harrisburg needs reforming.
Yet time and time again, the idea has failed to gain traction in a legislature deeply divided over whether it even needs to render itself more efficient and accountable.
"That's what happens when you put people with a vested interest in the status quo in charge of trying to make a change," said Tim Potts, a former House aide and cofounder of the activist group Democracy Rising. "Nothing happens."
Potts and other critics of Harrisburg's status quo have for years pushed for holding a constitutional convention to consider trimming the legislature as just one in a long list of changes, including instituting term limits and changing the highly partisan process for redrawing legislative and congressional districts every decade.
While holding such a convention would require legislative approval, noted Potts, the convention's delegates - members of the public, and not legislators - would be the ones making the recommendations for changes.
Those recommendations would then be placed on the ballot for voters to decide. But staging such a convention could open up a Pandora's box of proposals to rewrite parts of the state constitution.
