Part-Time Legislature
No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.
—Judge Gideon J. Tucker, 1866
How many laws do we need?
We have outlawed hurting other people (murder, manslaughter, assault, battery, rape, kidnapping). We have outlawed hurting other people’s property (theft, vandalism, arson). We have outlawed lying for gain (fraud). We have outlawed damaging the environment (littering, polluting).
Yet we continue to pay a 120 lawmakers to sit in Sacramento full time, thinking of new laws to pass. Why?
Pass the budget
The state constitution requires that legislators pass the budget on time each year. (A duty which they have singularly failed to discharge.) The legislature should meet full-time for the month leading up to the deadline.
Adjust laws as needed
Otherwise, the legislature should meet one weekend every month to consider necessary changes—for example, updating wire fraud laws to take new communication technologies into account, or addressing changes in social structures since old laws were passed.
Repeal laws
The legislature can spend as much time as needed repealing laws. But looking around for new laws to pass leads to legislators looking for problems that don’t need solving, usually involving something “for the children.”
Don’t quit your day job
With one full month per year and one weekend a month the rest of the year, serving in the legislature should be like serving in the military reserves. Not only would we all be safer, as Judge Tucker observed, but legislators would remain more in touch with what it’s like to be a member of the public. Right now, they go off to Sacramento, usually from holding local appointed or elected office, and forget what it’s like to work for a living. Let’s change that.