Meeting recently with this newspaper's editorial board, state Rep. Mike Sturla seemed more talkative than usual, if that's possible.

He arrived a little early, had lots to say about any topic we threw at him and seemed happy to keep going. And he would have continued, I think, even after nearly two hours, except he must have noticed we had been talked to death.

Discussions with Sturla, the 10-term Lancaster Democrat, can be exhausting because he knows a lot, likes to delve into nitty-gritty stuff and is pretty sure he's right and can convince you likewise.

With our meeting wrapping up, Sturla handed us a 32-page stack of charts and graphs about tax loopholes, gasoline consumption, the spiking prison population and lots of other things. As if our brains had any more room.

It all makes me wonder if Sturla missed his calling. Wouldn't he be happier on talk radio?

But Sturla says he has the job he coveted. When he got to Harrisburg 20 years ago, he said, he looked around at the possibilities for advancement and told himself, "Someday, I want to be policy chair."

That day arrived at the end of 2008 when the 104-member Democratic caucus elected him chair of the House Majority Policy Committee. And in that leadership position, Sturla seems energized.

Some legislators are champion networkers. Others make constituent service their mantra. And yet others want to lead the charge of a high-profile cause. Sturla's niche? He wants to have impact where ideas intersect politics.

A nettlesome problem at the moment is how best to reap the promise of the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom. Should production be taxed? If so, how much? And how should the revenue be spent?

Sturla relishes being a player in those kinds of decisions. He wants to amass information, dissect the options and find the approach most likely to do the greatest good.

"I think good policy, in the end, wins elections," Sturla told us. "I have a hard time convincing a lot of my colleagues of that. But to me, good policy eventually gets recognized as good policy."

Sturla's a fierce partisan, and his policy preferences can be reflexively liberal. Of course, we should tax natural gas extraction! he'll say. Every other state does it.

But Sturla maintains that if his made-up mind bumps into an inconvenient fact, he'll rethink his position.

"I'd rather know those facts," he said, "and figure out what's wrong with my agenda than to be living under some delusion."

Words to live by, for sure. Not that it stops Sturla from pointing out other people's delusions.

Since April 2009, Sturla's policy committee has held 53 hearings all across Pennsylvania and on a wide range of topics.

This past August, while some lawmakers were taking the month off, Sturla and his committee was in Pottsville for a hearing on human services, in Bethlehem discussing library funding, in Harrisburg learning about antibiotics in livestock, and in Erie talking about water pollution.

Sturla said he takes his committee out of Harrisburg more often than previous chairmen did because he wants to inform the locals as much as the members of his own panel. At hearings where Sturla encounters people he considers misinformed, he likes being the myth buster.

But to be fair, there are times when it's his eyes that are opened.

At a hearing in Philadelphia on childhood obesity, for example, Sturla took note when three testifiers from different parts of the state offered the same observation: today's children may be the first generation to not live as long as their parents.

"I left that hearing," Sturla said, "thinking we better do something."

jhawkes@lnpnews.com