A Part-Time Legislature Won’t Solve the Problems

Sacramento —  On reflection, demoting California’s Legislature to part-time status sounded like a better idea last summer than it does today.

That’s probably because there are more signs of potential reform now than there were in the pre-Schwarzenegger era.

It may also be because the notion of a part-time Legislature has started to look like a real possibility. And, in the harsh reality of daylight, this picture is not pretty. It’s tainted with corruption, for starters.

I plead guilty. Last August, disgusted with perpetual, petty paralysis over a budget, I wrote that if the Legislature could not be reformed, it should be restrained. Damage contained. Downgraded to part time.

Since then, Gray Davis has been recalled and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger installed. Capitol politicians have been less partisan and more productive. The budget again was late, but blame rookies -- the governor and three of the four legislative leaders -- rather than rancor.

A vacationing Schwarzenegger, nevertheless, told a Times reporter in April that he wanted to pare back the Legislature to part time. “Spending so much time in Sacramento without anything to do,” he said, “then out of that comes strange bills.”

Strange bills! Schwarzenegger should have seen the bills when the lawmakers were part-timers, before 1967. Part time is no cure for wacko legislation.

One San Francisco assemblyman, back in the early ‘60s, introduced a bill to make it a misdemeanor to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. It didn’t pass. But plenty of loony measures did: a law prohibiting horses from mating within 100 yards of any city limits unless hidden from view; another requiring frogs injured in jumping contests to be quickly destroyed, but not eaten.

The inside word has been that Schwarzenegger is less interested in leading the charge toward a part-time Legislature than he is just jabbing at the lawmakers, showing them the range of his carrot-and-stick options.

The moment a governor starts pushing an actual initiative to downgrade the Legislature -- and inevitably cut back the members’ $99,000 base pay -- he can forget about a cooperative relationship with legislators, Democrat or Republican.

That no doubt was in Schwarzenegger’s thoughts when he backed off the part-time idea Friday on the “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

Asked by Leno about part-timing the Legislature, the governor replied: “That’s just something that I mentioned. Just an idea, not to be taken seriously.” He added, sort of mumbling: “It’s an issue I will address later on.”

Schwarzenegger thus distanced himself from the gadfly who last week launched his own initiative to knock the Legislature down to part time. The longtime activist -- Ted Costa, who heads the grass-roots group People’s Advocate -- isn’t somebody to be lightly dismissed. Last year, he initiated the Davis recall.

Under Costa’s radical plan, legislators could vote on only 90 days during a two-year period. But they could stay in the Capitol longer, holding hearings and doing government oversight. Now they’re in session about eight months a year.

“They stay here all the time,” Costa says. “Their friends become lobbyists. They socialize with them. They owe their allegiance to them. They should be back talking to people in their districts, like the president of the Kiwanis Club.”

Time out!

Among legislators and lobbyists, relationships are less friendly than financial. They’re about political funding and favors. Whack the lawmakers’ pay and many -- those who aren’t rich -- will be looking for extra work to feed their families. Think they just might look to the special interests? That’s what many did in the so-called good old days.

There currently are far too many bills introduced, strange and substantive. There should be more oversight of state government. Legislators lollygag in February and March. But all these problems could be resolved under the present system by legislative leaders.

Regressing to part time would be treating the symptom without curing the systemic ailment.

Costa and I agree on this: A much more important reform would be to strip legislators of the power to redraw their own districts every 10 years. A classic abuse of this authority came in 2001 when lawmakers -- both parties -- wrote a reapportionment gerrymander that basically protected incumbents and preserved the political status quo.

Costa’s top priority is another initiative he’s pushing to turn over redistricting to retired judges.

“I feel that if we had good, fair, competitive districts, we probably wouldn’t need term limits or a part-time Legislature,” he says.

Would he drop the part-time proposal if the redistricting measure qualified for the ballot? “Probably, yes.”

Schwarzenegger also favors this reform and may sponsor his own proposal at a special election next year. Republicans love the idea. Democrats don’t. They’ve been the gerrymanders.

Myself, I’d make races even more competitive and ideologically broad by returning to an open primary. Neither party likes that, but Schwarzenegger quietly leans toward it. There’s a proposal -- Proposition 62 -- on the November ballot.

Term limits also need lengthening. There are too many rookies, too much jockeying for the next office and too little thinking about California’s future.

But the nation’s most populous state should not have a part-time Legislature -- any more than a part-time governor or part-time judiciary.

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George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at

[email protected].