PA House Dems get paid now, everybody else gets paid next week

[cinyc]

Brilliant PR move.  Kind of like the morons in the US House of Representatives buying themselves 2 new airplanes while telling those who testify before them  that they should fly coach.

Let them eat cake.

[cinyc]

Sadly, you would be surprised how little the news from Harrisburg gets around.  that's part of the problem with not having our capital in a real city (yeah, it is technically a decent sized metro, but if you have ever been there, having the state capitol there is that cities only justification for existence).  No one reads the Harrisburg papers, not even other in-state news papers.  It's part of the reason they can get away with being so corrupt down there.

Laziness is the only reason they didn't move the thing back during the end of the 19th century, either to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or a location closer to the center of the state (like Altoona)... shame.

Harrisburg is actually pretty close to the population center of Pennsylvania - it's in Newport, about 20 miles NNW of Harrisburg. 

This type of hypocrisy is more likely to be exposed than more mundane news coming out of Harrisburg.

Edit:  The Morning Call, where this article appeared, is Allentown's newspaper.

[cinyc]

Soult's right...the capital really should either be in Philly or Pittsburgh.  I hear much more about the hijinx in Trenton (or even Delaware)...than I do about anything about the PA gubment.  If the capital was in either of the big two at least someone would hear about it.

When a state has two large, relatively equally-sized cities, the capital usually doesn't end up in either of them, for fear that one will overshadow the other.  Especially when the cities are on opposite sides of the state.  The (relatively) large-city state capitals tend to be in states with one dominant population center that overshadows the rest of the state - like Boston, Phoenix and Denver.

[cinyc]

And its preferable not to favor one over the other rather than ensuring that people in at least one of the two big metro areas knows what the hell is going on?

It is what it is.  Arguably, it's better for folks from the rival non-capital city that outside members of the legislature not be Philadephiaized or New York City-ized than conduct their business in a more boring city in the middle of nowhere.  Do the newspapers and TV and radio stations not have Harrisburg bureaus or reports from Harrisburg sister stations/papers these days?

Most state capitals are remarkably located near the population center of the state.