May 10, 2021 6 min read

Since the current Pennsylvania Constitution was adopted in 1968, it’s been amended more than 40 times.

In this year’s primary, set for May 18, voters have the opportunity to add an additional three amendments.

First, there is a proposed amendment that would prohibit the denial of an individual’s rights under Pennsylvania law because of their race or ethnicity. The proposal has proven to be largely uncontroversial and has stirred no organized opposition.

Two other proposed amendments, on the other hand, have stirred much more urgent debate. Both arising from the coronavirus pandemic, one would automatically end any disaster declarations after 21 days and prevent a governor from extending it, regardless of the severity of the emergency, unless the Legislature also agrees. The other, related amendment would give the Legislature the power to terminate or extend a disaster declaration without the governor’s approval.

Republicans who pushed the proposed amendments through the Legislature have argued that the restrictions put in place by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf over the last 14 months have curtailed the freedom of the commonwealth’s residents, damaged their livelihoods and harmed the state’s business owners. However, the governor and his allies have countered that the constitutional amendments would harm his ability – or that of any future governor, regardless of party – to respond quickly to emergencies, whether they are pandemics, nuclear accidents like the one at Three Mile Island more than four decades ago or natural disasters like tornadoes or floods.

Randy Padfield, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA), said at a press conference in Harrisburg last month, “These two amendments, if passed, have the potential to drastically impact the ability to effectively respond to and recover from disasters and other emergencies in the future. These are not single-issue items nor should these proposed amendments be solely viewed through the lens of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

This week, Kevin Molloy, who was the emergency management coordinator in Dauphin County when the Three Mile Island accident occurred 42 years ago, said that current state laws regarding emergencies are sound, and changing them would be “unnecessary and unwise.”

“One cannot call a ‘time-out’ at the end of 21 days to have a political discussion,” Molloy said. “The disruption to the disaster response has the potential to be catastrophic itself.”

Supporters of the amendment counter, however, that the changes to the state’s constitution would not hinder the governor’s ability to respond to disasters, but instead have the governor and the Legislature, two co-equal branches of government, working cooperatively in the face of calamity. In an essay published last month in the Observer-Reporter, state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Carroll, said that the restrictions put in place by the governor exacerbated problems like hunger and domestic violence, and those problems would have been “significantly mitigated” if Wolf had worked with the Legislature as the pandemic was unfolding.

Bartolotta wrote that the two amendments require “cooperation and communication between the branches of government when a prolonged disaster strikes.”

State Rep. Tim O’Neal, R-South Strabane, also supports the constitutional amendments. In a social media post, O’Neal said he voted to put the two constitutional amendments on the ballot because, in his estimation, “they will restore the foundational system of checks and balances that has been missing over the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure you, the people, have a voice in how we deal with similar situations in the future.”

If the proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting discrimination based on race or ethnicity is approved, Pennsylvania would be joining 16 other states that have put similar amendments in their constitutions. The commonwealth approved an amendment in the 1970s, at the height of the women’s liberation movement, that outlawed discrimination on the basis of gender.

The amendments were able to get on this year’s ballot after having been approved in the Legislature in two successive sessions. The non-discrimination amendment was spearheaded by state Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Philadelphia Democrat, and he said after it was approved for the ballot that discrimination is “coded into the DNA of this nation and we must take action to explicitly prohibit racial and ethnic discrimination in Pennsylvania’s constitution.”

To Hughes, discrimination is woven into everything from lending and policing to the educational system and housing.

“We need additional protections based on that history and the reality in this nation right now,” he said.

In addition, voters will also be asked to weigh in on a referendum that would allow municipal fire companies to tap into the same fund for loans that volunteer fire companies across Pennsylvania use.

For 45 years, Pennsylvania’s volunteer fire companies have turned to the Volunteer Loan Assistance Program to help cover the costs of equipment and building maintenance or expansion. The loan program could not be tapped by the smaller number of municipal, paid fire companies in the state, which includes companies like those in Washington and Uniontown. That could change, however, if a referendum on the May 18 primary ballot is approved by voters.

The referendum asks voters to agree to expanding the program, which is administered by the state fire commissioner, to municipal, paid professional fire companies. Like the volunteer companies, the municipal companies would be able to draw from it, and would have to pay the program back with 2% interest. Supporters of the referendum emphasize that if municipal fire companies are able to get loans from the program, it will not impede the ability of volunteer programs to also get loans.

“We are only adding 22 fire departments,” said Jerry Ozog, executive director of the Pennsylvania Fire and Emergency Services Institute, which has endorsed the referendum.

Other firefighting organizations in the state have also endorsed the referendum, including the Pennsylvania Professional Firefighters Association and the Pennsylvania Career Fire Chiefs Association.

Also, the fire companies in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s two largest cities, would not be able to access the loan program because they use municipal bonds to pay for building upgrades or equipment purchases, Ozog said. He pointed out that the loan program is “one of the special funds that is raided” by lawmakers to cover other state needs, adding, “We’d rather the money go to all fire departments.”

Putting the referendum on the ballot was unanimously supported by both Democrats and Republicans in the General Assembly.