SUNBURY – State house member Daryl Metcalfe (R-12th, Butler County), the head of the house state government committee in Harrisburg, has a number of issues with the protesters arrested in his office recently.
He said his opposition includes their ‘commit to arrest’ mindset, and some weren’t his constituents and were from out of state. He also said some were paid protesters, but primarily, they were supporting low priority legislation, “As a state government committee chair, my committee receives two to three hundred bills normally during the session.”
“We don’t run all of those bills. It’s our job to vet legislation and decide if we’re going to run that legislation or not, if it’s going to be considered by the full general assembly. We have some very high priority items; we just passed pension reform through my committee Monday evening of this week. We’ve been working on that issue for many years, holding multiple hearings,” he said.
Metcalfe called the WKOK live telephone talkshow On The Mark recently and talked about the high priorities his committee has, including a “Paycheck Protection” bill, REAL ID and pension reform.
He said, while he didn’t meet with the ‘March on Harrisburg’ people, they were heard, “They haven’t directly met with me but they have met with my staff, not everybody gets a meeting. We’re very busy here at the capital, I meet with individuals who I believe are going to deal with the legislation that we have on the front burner rather than the back burner many times.”
Metcalfe referred to the automatic voter registration bill, gift ban legislation and redistrict reforms as ‘back burner’ and said his busy committee has been focusing on ‘front burner’ items. You can hear his interview at WKOK.com.
