Now I get it. Forgive me dear readers for being obtuse. I didn't make the connection between last year's legislative pay raise and the slots law of 2004 until early this morning.

The linchpin is Pennsylvania's chief supreme court justice, Ralph Cappy. Some believe he played tit-for-tat in secret meetings with legislative leaders by promising to overturn challenges to the slots law in exchange for judicial pay raises. Or so the rumor mill goes.

And now, given that public hearings on applicants for 14 slots parlors began today in Gettysburg, it's probably too late for that knowlege to do any good. At least until the legislative brain trust behind this travesty faces reelection and Cappy is forced to stand for retention.

Mea culpa. I was too busy in my day job as an online sports editor last summer tracking a one-man hurricane named Terrell Owens and the damage he did to the Eagles.

So I missed Pennsylvanians Against Gambling Expansion, CasinoFree Pa. and other anti-slots groups filing suit in the Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn the gambling law. They lost and now slot machines look like a done deal, even though the wheels of justice were rigged from day one.

"Given the political dynamics of it, that case couldn't be won," Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause, told me today when asked why his state-wide good government group opted instead to make a federal case out of the pay raise issue rather than slot machines.

"An awful lot of powerful people wanted (slots) enacted and enforced," he added. "My advice to the anti-slots folks is to do damage control. Let's make the system as clean as we can get it. ... That case is dead. Unless they have new information about a different aspect of the law, they've pretty much played their hand."

I won't go into length on the wheeler-dealers getting greased with PAC money. Even slot machine opponents like Sen. Bob Jubelier took contributions from pro-slots interests before the 145-page slots bill was inserted into a two-paragraph bill requiring background checks for harness racing employees and then passed in the dead of night before holiday adjournment on July 2, 2004, without any public comment.

In a "unique" move, the law required that only the state Supreme Court had "exclusive jurisdiction to hear any challenge," Justice Cappy wrote in the Supreme Court's opinion ruling against the only lawsuit seeking to overturn the slots law.

He immediately added, "Since the Complaint is based on challenges to the constitutionality of the statute, we must begin by considering the standard by which we resolve constitutional challenges to legislative actions. First, our case law makes clear that there is a strong presumption in the law that legislative enactments do not violate our Constitution. ... This includes the manner by which legislation is enacted. All doubts are to be resolved in favor of finding that the legislative enactment passes constitutional muster. Thus, there is a very heavy burden of persuasion upon one who challenges the constitutionality of a statute."

If the same were true nationwide, Pennsylvania would have Jim Crow laws and separate but equal water fountains and schools today. So much for justice being blind.

The crux of the case boiled down to a specific section of the state Constitution which says, "No bill shall be passed containing more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title, except a general appropriation bill or a bill codifying or compiling the law or a part thereof."

That section "was designed to curb the practice of inserting into a single bill a number of distinct and independent subjects of legislation and purposefully hiding the real purpose of the bill," Cappy wrote.

Amazingly, though, Cappy and a majority of justices found "there is a single unifying subject - the regulation of gaming" between the background checks for harness racing employees and establishing "policies and procedures for gaming licenses for the installation and operation of slot machines, enacts provisions to assist Pennsylvania’s horse racing industry through other gaming, and provides for administration and enforcement of the gaming law, including measures to insure the integrity of the operation of slot machines."

Another portion of the state's Constitution says, "No law shall be passed except by bill, and no bill shall be so altered or amended, on its passage through either House, as to change its original purpose."

Yet, once again the justices defied common sense.

"Our Court recognized the practical realities of passing legislation and narrowly focused the inquiry," Cappy wrote, adding they ruled the slots law was constitutional "not by comparing the original purpose to the purpose at final passage, but by considering only the bill at final passage."

"Furthermore," Cappy later added, "our Court is loathe to substitute our judgment for that of the legislative branch under the pretense of determining whether an unconstitutional change in purpose of a piece of legislation has occurred during the course of its enactment."

Excuse me? Wasn't that the justices' jobs?

The only provision the high court did strike down was the notion that the newly established Gaming Board could ignore local zoning issues when deciding who gets a slots parlor license.

I'm probably the last person in the state to find out Cappy, long a proponent of higher pay for judges, had a prominent role in the now-repealed pay raise. But did he play quid-pro-quo, exchanging the slots law for a pay raise for judges?

Cappy met with legislative leaders in "a lot" of secret sessions, House Speaker John Perzel admitted to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Gov. Ed Rendell even thanked Cappy for suggesting that the pay for legislative, executive and judicial employees be tied to their federal counterparts.

Cappy, in turn, called the Legislature and the governor "courageous" for passing the pay hike and called the public outrage that followed, "knee jerk."

The state Judicial Conduct Board found Cappy did nothing wrong in February when it threw out a complaint filed in August by Harrisburg political activist Gene Stilp.

And there seems to be no smoking gun.

But that hasn't stopped Common Cause from pursuing the matter in a federal lawsuit. They're seeking to stop the state Supreme Court from ruling on two lawsuits before brought by judges who still want their higher pay.

The justices, sans Cappy who recused himself, held a hearing on the cases Monday even as a federal judges weighs Common Cause's request for an injuction barring the state court from ruling.

In its lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Common Cause asserts based on several affidavits it already has, "plaintiffs believe discovery will establish a decade-long struggle by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to coerce state funding whereby one or more justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and leaders of the General Assembly negotiated legislation desired by the Court in exchange for rulings favorable to the legislative leadership on cases then pending before the Court challenging the constitutionality of the process by which important legislation was consistently enacted in secret in violation of Article III of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

"If it is true, as Plaintiffs now believe, that justices of the highest court of the state bartered their votes on cases important to the interpretation and jurisprudence of key state constitutional provisions - provisions which are at issue in this case, and designed to protect the political rights of all citizens of the Commonwealth to know of and participate at every stage of the legislative process through their elected representatives - in exchange for state funding desired by the Justices, it would, standing alone, constitute a current and ongoing violation of plaintiffs' due process and equal protection rights under both federal and state constitutions."

Judge Yvette Kane has set a hearing for May 19.

"We're seeking discovery now which may lead to a lot of interesting information," said Barry Kauffman, Common Cause's executive director. "There have been lots and lots and lots of rumors. We'll have to see how all this pans out."

That's assuming his group can raise enough money to afford the fight.

Although the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania has joined Common Cause in the suit, "I need to come up with $200,000 in the next couple of weeks" to pay the lawyers, Kauffman said.

They got $20 from me today when I signed up to be a Common Cause member, but Kauffman said none of that money will go toward this fight.

Anyone interested in contributing can send a check to:

CCEF (The Common Cause Education Fund)
300 N. Second St., Suite 600,
Harrisburg, Pa., 17101