Partisan turf wars are heating up in the Pennsylvania Capitol.
The latest skirmish is over the contents of a fifth floor conference room, namely the videoconferencing equipment that House Republicans say they used their portion of taxpayer money to buy.
According to documents obtained through a public records request, the GOP caucus spent more than $108,000 for improvements to the room over the past 12 years when they were the majority party and held the speakership.
But House Speaker Mark Rozzi, a Berks County Democrat elected as speaker last month, claims that space in the Capitol belongs to the speaker’s office, and thinks more along the lines of finders keepers.
He told PennLive, “the rightful ownership of that taxpayer-funded equipment is something that our attorneys are looking into.”
That isn’t the only real estate dispute in the Capitol these days.
Rep. Tom Mehaffie, R-Dauphin County, remains a legislator without a Capitol office. Mehaffie was told to vacate his Capitol office two weeks ago to clear out the office that had been assigned to him for six years. The reason is unclear since the House GOP says they don’t discuss internal caucus management.
The former office of Pa. Rep. Tom Mehaffie (R-Dauphin), who was recently booted from his Capitol office space. (Zack Hoopes, PennLive.com/file)
But Mehaffie thinks it is to sanction him for not being a team player with his caucus by siding with Democrats on some votes and for refusing to sign a letter to exercise a parliamentary maneuver to force the House into session. He stands by those decisions.
“I try to be pragmatic. I think everybody knows that. I’ve been pretty independent on certain issues but that’s because of the way the [106th House] district represents,” he said.
As of Wednesday morning, Mehaffie said he remains without a Capitol office assignment.
As the new year and new legislative session started, control of the legislature - and office space - was up in the air.
But a Democratic sweep of special elections on Feb. 7 kept the three of open seats in Democrats’ hands, giving them a 102-101 seat majority.
Rozzi, who was elected speaker with bipartisan support in January, before Democrats took control, has rankled Republicans since.
House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler, of Lancaster County, says he regretted his vote for Rozzi and called on him to step aside for several reasons, including his sudden takeover of the fifth-floor conference room earlier this month.
This fifth-floor office suite in the Pa. Capitol has become the latest pawn in the ongoing partisan dispute that has brought the state House of Representatives to a standstill. (Jan Murphy | jmurphy@pennlive.com)
Rozzi had the locks changed on the conference room doors without prior notice to Republicans and after working hours. This irked Cutler who complained that his chief of staff Jake Smeltz and Republican chief counsel Anthony Aliano’s offices bookended that conference room and left sensitive caucus information in there. He called it a “breach of internal security.”
Rozzi’s response: “This space should have never been occupied without my permission. It is speaker’s office space, and Jake is not an employee of the speaker” and hadn’t been since Nov. 30, when the last legislative session concluded along with Cutler’s term as speaker.
Cutler said in a letter to Rozzi, “the Republican Caucus had installed for my use when I was speaker a video conferencing system which was procured by the Republican Information Technology Department (RITS). In fact RITS currently has a service contract with the company that installed this equipment.”
Rep. Mark Rozzi of Berks County, sworn in as Pa. House speaker. (Photo provided by Pa. House Democratic Caucus, file)
House Republican spokesman Jason Gottesman said the contents at issue include two screens, audio equipment and several video cameras and microphones. He said it was ordered in April 2020, which was in the early stages of COVID-19 cases hitting Pennsylvania.
Prior to its purchase, he said the only conferencing ability in the room that at one time was occupied by court offices was via telephone. “Given the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear upgrades were necessary as the caucus moved toward virtual platforms to manage through the crisis,” he said.
Gottesman said the room was used by the speaker, the Republican leader and GOP members for meetings due to its large size and videoconferencing capabilities. It was used by the speaker when he met with other state leaders as well as in one case, a delegation from Germany.”
Gottesman said the equipment is tagged as belonging to Republicans “and therefore will be moved to a new location at some point in the near future.”
The House convenes on Tuesday when it is expected to swear in the three new Democratic members and consider adoption of internal operating procedures for the two-year legislative session.
At that point, it will have a full complement but it will last only for that week. Republicans will lose one of their members, Rep. Lynda Schlegel Culver, who was elected to fill an open Senate seat in a Jan. 31 special election.
Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.