CA: Part-time Legislature in California's future? (Ted Costa)

OC Register ^ | 12/8/03 | Op/Ed

[NormsRevenge]

If the Legislature doesn't shape up and enact sensible budget and other reforms, what next can be done? Maybe return to a part-time Legislature such as the state had until the 1960s.

The part-time idea is being advanced by Ted Costa, CEO of People's Advocate, the Sacramento- based activist group that spearheaded the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis.

[NormsRevenge]

citizen legislators 8-?

sounds like a risky deal to me... NOT!!! ;-\

[Joe Hadenuf]

part-time Legislature

Oh man, I like it.

And we'll pay them $14.50 an hour, and teach them it's an honor to be a public servant for 6 months, and they are lucky they are being paid.

Lets do it!

[DumpsterDiver]

I think it was in 1968 that then-Governor Reagan signed the law that started the payroll deduction for state income taxes. That made it much easier to raise taxes 'cause nobody noticed a couple of bucks more being deducted from their paychecks.

I believe it was then in 1971 that the state legislature decided that they simply must start meeting full-time. Never give those ratty politicians access to more money. It makes them go crazy.

[only1percent]

I'd like to see a unicameral legislature of 100 members. Fewer politicians, no duplication, and the districts would actually be smaller, and thus more responsive, than the current districts in the 80-member Assembly or 40-member Senate. Also, it takes the political process out of the (inherently unaccountable) conference committee and moves it into the open forum of the legislative floor.

[45Auto]

Other than the guillotine, a part-time legislature is the best way to limit the damage done by politicians.

[CdMGuy]

Well, you are not quite right. I moved to CA in 1970 and there was no payroll withholding. I think it started in 1972.

[toddst]

. . . in principle we always have supported a part-time Legislature made up of "citizen legislators" on the model of America's founders, who held real jobs between taking a few weeks each year to serve the people.

Part-time government should be instituted at all levels - clearly including Congress. The professional politicians we have now out not to be able to devote every waking hour to writing more laws and spending every dime they can confiscate from citizens.

[ibbryn]

This is the best thing that could ever happen to CA's government.
So it will never happen.

[Oatka]

We have a part-time legislature here in Nevada - meet once every two years for a max of 120 days.

I met a couple of our senators at a City Council meeting and they all had REAL jobs to feed their families.

One problem though is that a TON of bills pile up between sessions and the legislators are under pressure to deal with all of them in those 120 days.

In their rush this year, they passed a bill allowing state agencies to recognize the matricula card. When I grilled the above pols as to why, the best they could come up with was "the Hispanics were yelling for it." I don't know of any Hispanics in my neighborhood who would agree - the illegals are cutting the ground out from under them also.

We've been trying to get CCW reciprocity here for years but good ole Bernie Anderson (D-Dist. 31) is head of the committee that bottles it up each time.

Still think it is a good idea though, along with 401Ks instead of pensions.

[heleny]

I'd like to see a unicameral legislature of 100 members. Fewer politicians, no duplication, and the districts would actually be smaller, and thus more responsive, than the current districts in the 80-member Assembly or 40-member Senate. Also, it takes the political process out of the (inherently unaccountable) conference committee and moves it into the open forum of the legislative floor.

I think I'd go for it, too, provided the districts aren't gerrymandered too much.

In the US Congress, the Senators represent states, so it seems that an improvement to the bicameral legislature would be if we had 58 State Senators, each representing one of the 58 counties. As the CA legislature is now, it seems that the state Senate duplicates the Assembly.

[only1percent]

California had a system of county representation for most of the 19th and 20th century, but it (together with all such systems) was invalidated by Baker v. Carr in the early 1960s, which held that any district system had to have an approximately even resident-to-represenative ratio. The only exception was the U.S. Senate, which being expressly provided for in the Constitution could not be ruled unconstitutional.

State Senates in many places are not entirely duplicative. In some states, the Senate has significantly more power than the Assembly/State House of Representatives (not really the case in California). In other states there's a massively smaller number of Senators than members of the lower house, so in theory there should be a qualitatively different character to the debate, professionalism of the members, immunity from highly parochial interests, etc. In California is a 1:2 ratio of Senators to Asembly members, so that doesn't apply either.