In his effort to repeal the controversial legislative pay-raise and ban the use of the seemingly unconstitutional unvouchered expenses, state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe is also providing rank-and-file lawmakers an opportunity to reclaim some power from legislative leaders in Harrisburg. Metcalfe's efforts are worthy of support - for his specific targets of the stealthily handled pay-raise law and unvouchered expenses, but also in the more general impact his actions might have in reforming representative government in Pennsylvania.

Utilizing a seldom-used parliamentary tactic known as a discharge resolution, Metcalfe is attempting to force two bills - one repealing the pay raise and one banning unvouchered expenses - out of the House Rules Committee. The two bills had been sent to the Rules Committee by House Speaker John Perzel, R-Philadelphia, who was a key architect of the pay-raise vote and remains a defender of the controversial vote.

A more appropriate committee for the bills repealing the pay raise and banning unvouchered expenses would have been the State Government Committee, but its chairman, Rep. Paul Clymer, R-Bucks, is a pay raise foe who would have likely pushed the bills out of the committee for a vote by the full House.

The Rules Committee is headed by Majority Leader Sam Smith, a pay-raise supporter. And Perzel expects Smith to keep the bills bottled up in committee, never allowing them to receive a full vote in the House.

Political analyst G. Terry Madonna, a professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, put it clearly; "He put them (the bills) in that committee to die."

That is wrong and it goes against the wishes of the citizens of Pennsylvania, who have expressed widespread outrage over the pay raise itself, the covert way in which it was passed and the use of unvouched expenses, which appear to be in clear violation of the state constitution's ban on mid-term pay raises.

But Perzel does not care if trying to kill those two bills is wrong or goes against the wishes of the voters. If he cared about what is wrong or goes against the wishes of most Pennsylvanians, he never would have been a part of the secretive process that resulted in the pay-raise vote at 2 a.m. on July 7 with no advance notice and no public debate.

Meltalfe needs to garner the signatures of 25 fellow reform-minded lawmakers for the discharge resolution. If can accomplish that and the pay-raise repeal bill and the bill banning unvouchered expenses reach the floor of the House, lawmakers would be forced to vote on these two issues with the bright light of media coverage and voter expectations.

Madonna warns that Perzel and other leaders have parliamentary maneuvers at their disposal to try to stop Metcalfe. But if Perzel and his cohorts in leadership play games by moving the bills from one committee to another, trying to stay one step ahead of Metcalfe's discharge resolution, it will become even more obvious that political leadership in Harrisburg is self-serving and not concerned with the public's interests,

Metcalf's actions are serving several useful purposes. They might be able to right two legislative wrongs - the pay raise vote and the use of unvouchered expenses. The odds are long, however. The last time a discharge resolution was attempted was in 2004, and it failed then.

Beyond righting two wrongs, Metcalfe's efforts could also let rank-and-file lawmakers reclaim some of the power they have ceded to leadership and motivate right-thinking representatives to return to serving their constituencies rather than serving the party leadership.