Three longtime Pa. lawmakers decide to step down

Three Pennsylvania lawmakers have announced they won’t be running for re-election next year.

State Sen. Jeffrey Piccola of Dauphin County and Rep.

Curt Schroder of Chester County, both Republican, and Democratic Rep. Ed Staback of Lackawanna County all said Thursday they intend to retire.

Schroder, who will step down next year at the end of his ninth term, helped push for a new law sought by business groups that limits the liability for negligence of defendants in some civil court cases. He also is the chairman of the House Gaming Oversight Committee.

Piccola, who championed the law to allow a state takeover of Pennsylvania’s troubled capital, chairs the Senate Education Committee.

He narrowly won re-election in 2008. Piccola’s district would dramatically change under a proposed Republican redraw of the state’s legislative district boundaries, and would no longer include the heavily Democratic city of Harrisburg.

Piccola, in his fourth full term as a senator, served 20 years in the Legislature before that.

Staback, a senior state representative from the Scranton area who has served 14 terms, has been the ranking Democratic member of the House Game and Fisheries Committee for eight years.