HARRISBURG — Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s bid to merge the Department of Corrections and the Board of Probation and Parole is hitting another wall of resistance, with House members, prosecutors and even two parole board members criticizing the bill during a Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday.

The crux of the opposition revolves around whether prison officials would have too much power over who should get paroled and when parole violators must go back to prison, without an independent agency making those decisions.

Merging the agencies has received approval from the state Senate, which passed legislation Wednesday, as part of a larger effort designed to help newly released inmates succeed once they are released.

In often blunt talk, committee members challenged Wolf’s corrections secretary, John Wetzel, and the chairman of the parole board, Leo Dunn, over their improved recidivism statistics and whether parole decisions would truly be independent of the jailers in a merged agency.

“It’s hard to have faith in a lot of this,” said Rep. Todd Stephens, R-Montgomery, a former county and federal prosecutor.

They also questioned why the two agencies couldn’t work together but remain independent, criticism that was buttressed by testimony from two parole board members, county prosecutors and a parole agents’ union representative.

“This proposed merger of the parole board into the Department of Corrections is going to drastically change the criminal justice system in the commonwealth,” warned Craig McKay, a former parole board member who is now an assistant district attorney in Washington County.

Wetzel and Dunn insisted that the Senate bill ensures parole decisions would remain independent.