Mark B. Cohen - Early Governmental Career

Early Governmental Career

Cohen was elected in a special election on May 21, 1974. He was 24 years old. Political observers at the time noted that he was backed by Reform Democrats in the Philadelphia chapter of Americans for Democratic Action and Philadelphia Democratic Chairman Peter J. Camiel. He was officially nominated for the special election as the Democratic nominee for the vacant House seat by the executive committee of the Democratic State Committee. He was endorsed by the Philadelphia Daily News columnist Chuck Stone on May 20, 1974 in his "Page 10" column. His election was one sign among many that voters wanted legislators who were more active, more articulate, more engaged and less likely to be perceived as rubber stamps. Cohen was elected during the gubernatorial administration of Milton Shapp, when "The General Assembly was emerging as a political and policymaking force of its own, a coequal branch of government in Pennsylvania, if you will, whose members often had a political lifespan in the Capitol longer than a Governor....Legislators began to become political entities in their own right with their own political identities in their districts back home...."

He was sworn in as a Member of the Pennsylvania House on June 10, 1974, taking the oath of office in a joint ceremony with fellow Members elected on the same day Bob O'Donnell and Raymond F. Lederer. He was soon assigned by Democratic Leader Herbert Fineman to the House Bipartisan Committee To Study Situations and Circumstances of Victims of Rape, chaired by Rep. Richard McClachey. After the Bipartisan Committee concluded its hearings, Cohen joined other members of it in co-sponsoring House Bill 2706, giving powers and duties to the Pennsylvania State Police concerning victims of rape, and House Bill 2707, requiring schools of nursing to have courses of instruction in the handling and treatment of victims of rape. In 1975, Cohen voted for House Bill 580, which restructured "the law of rape so that evidence of a victim's prior sexual conduct was irrelevant" in order that rape no longer be "the only offense in this state where the victim has to establish her own good conduct....It (House Bill 580) does however, permit evidence of the victim's prior sexual past with the defendant. That's not excluded. But the fact that victim had sexual relations with some other person 4 or 5 or 10 years before is excluded. The reason for that is that it is irrelevant in establishing whether this person was or was not raped." Cohen then voted for House Bill 580 with Senate amendments on May 12, 1976.

Fineman later appointed him as Secretary of the State Government Committee and as Chairman of the Public Utility Subcommittee of the Consumer Protection Committee.

These assignments would be followed by his appointment to the Special Committee to Investigate the Three Mile Island accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station by Democratic (Minority) Leader K. Leroy Irvis. The investigation took place in the 1979-1980 legislative session; Three Mile Island accident health effects were not measured until later. Much of the work of the special committee was in demonstrating the need for an evacuation plan in the event of another nuclear accident.

As a member of the Consumer Protection Committee in 1975-1976, and as the Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Public Utilities Subcommittee of the name-changed Consumer Affairs Committee in 1977-1978, both led by "Mr. Consumer," C.L. Schmitt, Cohen helped enact a vigorous pro-consumer agenda. Calling Pennsylvania's retail fair trade law—which allowed manufactures to set a minimum price for the sale of a product--"a noble experiment that has failed," Cohen was the prime sponsor of legislation to repeal it, with an exception for cigarettes.

On January 28, 1975, he co-sponsored a bill establishing a consumer advocate to argue for public interests before the Public Utility Commission of Pennsylvania, the Milk Marketing Board, and the Insurance commissioner. The bill quickly passed the House and went to the Senate Committee on Consumer Affairs. There the bill was limited to the Public Utility Commission of Pennsylvania, sent back to the House, rewritten by a conference committee, and finally enacted. Writing in 2010, the Chair of the Senate Consumer Affairs Committee in 1975, Franklin L. Kury, called the legislative creation of the consumer advocate "the single most important step" in improving the PUC. "It is impossible," Kury wrote,"for the commission to be both a judge of the rate increase application before it and an advocate for the rate payers at the same time. The ratepayers needed an independent lawyer to represent them. By establishing a consumer advocate, we ensured that for the first time a lawyer knowledgeable in utility law, with the support of a good staff, would confront the utility lawyers and make them prove their case for an increase." Kury attributed a major U.S. Supreme Court decision saving Pennsylvania consumers $44,267,054 to the creation of the consumer advocate, saying "The consuming public does not have standing to appeal PUC decisions. The PUC could not (and would not) appeal a Commonwealth Court decision in its favor. But the consumer advocate has authority to appeal the PUC and Commonwealth court decisions, as well as to defend the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision before the U.S. Supreme Court. As Representative Schmitt and the rest of us contemplated, a consumer advocate could face off with the utility lawyers and give the consuming public representation that protected its interests."

On February 5, 1975, as Congress was considering whether or not to renew U.S. involvement in the War in Vietnam between North Vietnam and the Viet Cong on one side and South Vietnam on the other side, Cohen one of 6 state house Democrats to introduce House Resolution 29 to "memorialize the Congress of the United States to enact legislation; or take such other appropriate action as may be necessary to prevent increased military and economic assistance to countries involved in the war in Southeast Asia and to prevent the use of military forces of the United States to aid such countries." The sentiment the resolution expressed was widespread, and the US Congress did not renew military efforts there.

To deal with plant closings, a major threat to Pennsylvania workers, Cohen—following the enactments of the states of Maine and Wisconsin in 1971 and 1976 respectively -- introduced state legislation similar to and foreshadowing the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Cohen's 1977 bill provided for 75 days advance notice for plant closings. In May, 1979, he introduced House Bill 1251, the more comprehensive Employee Protection and Community Stabilization Act. His legislation and a vigorous citizen/labor/clergy campaign led by the Delaware Valley Coalition for Jobs (DVCJ) helped lead to enactment of 60 day advance notice plant closing legislation by the City of Philadelphia, which, in turn, helped inspire the federal 60 day advance notice requirement enacted in 1988. Beyond its specific legal provisions, the federal plant closing legislation had broader social significance: it "has legitimized among policymakers the idea that firm managers ought to be responsive to a multiplicity of interests," a critic charged. Among strong supporters of plant closing legislation, the federal legislation was considered inadequate compared to other proposed bills or to Cohen's Employee Protection and Community Stabilization Act.

He supported the Homeowners Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program (HEMAP), enacted in 1983 as the Pennsylvania Foreclosure Prevention Act, which ultimately gave delayed interest payment loans to 45,000 families to keep them from being foreclosed. He voted for it, as House Bill 500, on June 29, 1983, after joining with others to vote down a series of weakening amendments. He then supported the bill—with the language it was amended in the Senate—on December 14, 1983. It was approved by Governor Richard Thornburgh on December 23, 1983. In a June 30, 2009 press release calling for a $20 million annual HEMAP appropriation, he said that, since its inception, $211 million was appropriated to HEMAP, and $238 million has been repaid. On November 3, 2011, speaking at a prayer vigil in front of Governor Tom Corbett's Philadelphia office building in support of emergency HEMAP funding, he said the program generated "more money paid back, including interest, than money appropriated, so it really doesn't cost very much."

He actively opposed legeislation regulating the operation of an adjustable-rate mortgage that did not place any cap on upward rate adjustments caused by higher inflation.

As a member of the Philadelphia delegation in the House, he actively opposed—and helped kill—mayoral proposals to raise the Philadelphia wage tax in the middle of the fiscal year in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, saying, for example, that a 1976 mid-year wage tax increase "will only encourage the enormous amount of waste in the Philadelphia city government."

He supported legislation that made ward realignments in Philadelphia so much more diffficult that none have occurred since, by requiring any ward realignment plan approved by the Common Pleas Court to be sent to the Philadelphia City Council for consideration and placement on the ballot.

He voted to make the office of Attorney General an elected office.

As a member of the House Appropriations Committee in 1981, he interrogated Secretary of Health and Welfare Helen O'Bannon on the extent of the legislature's duty to follow an order by Federal Judge Raymond J. Broderick to appropriate $900,000 for a special master in the long-running Halderman v. Pennhurst State School and Hospital litigation. His questions and her answers were cited by both Judge Broderick and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals as part of her obstruction of his order, leading her and the Department of Public Welfare to be held in contempt of court, and the Office of the Special Master (in charge of the deinstitutionalization of Pennhurst patients who could be better treated in community settings) to be funded. Ultimately, with Cohen's support, deinstitutionalization led to the closing of all but six of the more than 20 Pennsylvania State Hospitals, including Allentown State Hospital, Dixmont State Hospital, Harrisburg State Hospital, Haverford State Hospital, Lawrence Frick State Hospital, Mayview State Hospital, Pennhurst State School and Hospital, the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry, and Somerset State Hospital among other facilities, and the downsizing of still other psychiatric hospitals. Hundreds of millions of dollars were saved each year.

Cohen was the only House Democrat to join most House Republicans in opposing allowing an objectionable appropriation of $150,000 to the office of Republican Pennsylvania General Counsel Jay Waldman to delay the payment of checks to 80,000 welfare recipients.