CAMP HILL, Pa. - Fearing that negative public feelings toward lawyers could be let loose, the Pennsylvania Bar Association backed away yesterday from calling for creation of a citizens' commission to look into changes to the state constitution.

The best that a roomful of 350 lawyers could do with the hot-potato issue was to decide to pick another group of lawyers to look into constitutional proposals at a later date.

The group's reluctance to push for immediate and open-ended change was a blow to efforts led by the Bar Association president, Clifford E. Haines, a Philadelphia trial lawyer.

Haines had urged the group to take the lead in addressing what he sees as the breakdown in state government, demonstrated most recently by the 101-day budget crisis in Harrisburg, and in 2005 by state legislators' middle-of-the-night vote to raise their salaries.

"Whether it is the recent debacle with the budget or the pay-raise scandal, the general consensus is that things don't work right in Pennsylvania, that the public isn't getting the government to which it is entitled," Haines said in an interview.

The group's worry was that an eventual constitutional convention might take up issues the Bar Association has been fighting for decades, such as tort reform and caps on attorneys' fees.

Andrew F. Susko of Philadelphia, co-leader of a Bar Association study group that recommended the call for a citizens commission, asked the Bar Association's house of delegates to look beyond the specific interests of lawyers.

"We are appealing to your better nature, to your higher spirit," he told the gathering at the Radisson Penn Harris Hotel.

But Clifford A. Rieders of Williamsport, a dissenting member of the study panel, warned that the bar might find few friends at a constitutional convention.

"There is great hostility toward lawyers," he said.

Robert C. Jubelirer of Altoona, former president of the state Senate, agreed.

"I think there is the potential to unleash a tremendous amount of anti-lawyer feeling," he told the delegates.

In recommending that the governor and legislature appoint a commission, the study panel had suggested that all aspects of the constitution - save one - be open to review.

The aspect that the panel proposed to leave out was Article 5, which governs the practice of law in Pennsylvania.

Rieders said that such a recommendation - "Don't look at anything that messes with lawyers" - would surely be "subject to scorn."

The last time the state made broad changes in the constitution was in 1968. State Rep. Kathy Manderino (D., Phila.), co-leader of the study panel, said that 37 individual changes have been made in the 41 years since then.

Each change required passage in two sessions of the legislature, and then approval by the voters in a statewide referendum.

Besides in the '60s, there have been four constitutional conventions in state history: in 1776, 1790, 1838, and 1874.

Proponents of a citizens commission were asked by a delegate what exactly was so pressing that a general constitutional review is needed again.

Haines stood up.

He mentioned school funding. Scholars, he said, have cited public education as perhaps the most important function of state government. Yet the Pennsylvania Constitution, as it stands, says very little about it. This, he said, has resulted in widespread inequity in school funding.

He then gave a second reason for immediate change.

He noted that after next year's election, the legislature will again divide up the 203 state House district and 50 state Senate districts according to population changes.

The constitution, at present, permits all sorts of gerrymandering by the party in power, Haines said. This practice needs to be cleaned up with a provision to allow a nonpartisan panel to set district boundaries, he said.

Other lawyers said that these ideas - good or bad - might not even be addressed by a citizens commission, or a convention.

They said that instead of recommending open-ended constitutional review, the Bar Association ought to get behind very specific changes and recommend only those as constitutional amendments.

Already, 60 proposed amendments are on file in the legislature. These include calls for cutting the size of the House and Senate.

The lawyers voted overwhelmingly to form another panel - this one to come up with the group's specific proposals.

Rieders, in an interview, said this was better than the "public circus" of a convention in which myriad issues - including gun rights and abortion - would likely be pushed by "special interests."

James F. Mundy of Philadelphia supported the idea that won the day: create another panel of lawyers to take a closer look at reform.

Mundy, a veteran Bar Association activist, told the delegates: "Let's put these problems in the hands of the people who know how to deal with them."

Contact staff writer Tom Infield at 610-313-8205 or tinfield@phillynews.com.