If You Strike Down Paid Sick Leave Legislation, It Will Become More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine

We told you a few days ago that Pennsylvania Republicans were looking to pass a bill that would keep Philadelphia from passing a local ordinance requiring businesses here to offer paid sick leave to employees. Jon Geeting at Keystone Politics thinks the GOP will regret using state legislation to intervene on a local issue:

My take is that’s just going to push the Democratic candidates for Governor, and for lower seats, to take up the mantle of a statewide earned sick days bill. Currently there’s not a ton of energy around that as a major campaign theme for anybody, but we’re getting into the real campaign season now, and this is an issue that polls very well for the Democrats.

I think Republicans will come to regret pushing this ALEC bill now, because the decently good chance that they’ll be out of power in two of the three branches of PA state government in 2015 makes it more likely we end up with a statewide earned sick days bill, rather than no more local sick days laws.

In other words:Using state powers to head off a bill will make the issue a state issue. And that could end up having results Republicans would rather not live with with.