ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702120024
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
AFTER ENDURING more than a few marathon sessions and late-night subcommittee meetings, members of Virginia's General Assembly might be forgiven for wondering whether legislative service is worth the effort.
Limiting assembly sessions to 60 days in even-numbered years, 45 in odd-numbered, is one way Virginia has kept hold of the notion of a part-time citizen legislature. But giving adequate consideration to legislative business within those time limits is getting more difficult. The tradition of a citizen legislature remains alive in Virginia and most other states, but it is showing signs of severe strain.
Few states are yet like California, where legislators are paid a $72,000 annual salary for year-round lawmaking. For part-time work, Virginia's state senators get $18,000 a year plus certain expenses; members of the House of Delegates, slightly less. Besides, California is a particularly big and complicated state - so big that California state senators represent more people than do U.S. congressmen.
Even so, the increasing complexity of state government is exerting similar pressures on smaller states to move away from the citizen-legislature concept. The devolution of responsibilities from the federal to the state levels is apt to intensify these pressures.
The roll of states listed by the National Conference of State Legislatures as having full-time professional assemblies has risen to 10, the most recent addition being Florida. Other states are approaching that status. For example, Minnesota's legislature is still considered "hybrid" by the conference, but dozens of Minnesota legislators have no other occupation.
Virginia, though not so far along the path as Minnesota, is also listed as a "hybrid" state. The Old Dominion is beginning to see the emergence of lawmakers who essentially have no other job. Workloads are getting heavier, both within and without the formal legislative sessions.
Full-time professional legislatures have some virtues. In the information era, they tend to attract better-informed members who are more closely attuned to, and have more time for, the intricacies of public-policy details. They can more easily establish themselves as useful counterweights to gubernatorial power. They are less prone to conflicts of interest.
But on balance, the record of full-time legislatures is not encouraging. In the February issue of Governing magazine, Charles Mahtesian surveys that record. The leadership of full-time legislatures tends to be less stable; partisanship tends to be more bitter; acrimony rather than comity tends to dominate relationships among lawmakers. If Virginia had a full-time legislature, could the state Senate have reached its productive power-sharing arrangement after the 1995 elections produced a 20-20 party-line split? Judging from the record of full-time legis-
latures, probably not.
Full-timers may possess more policy expertise and technical knowledge than part-timers. But wisdom and common sense are another matter. Those for whom lawmaking is a profession rather than a civic interest are further removed from the concerns of average voters. And those for whom professional success depends on getting and holding legislative power are likelier to be on collision courses with each other's ambition than those for whom politics is a sideline.
The case for citizen lawmakers isn't nostalgia for a dying tradition. It's about government's future effectiveness.
Monday: How to preserve Virginia's part-time assembly.
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