Legislature Should Be Cut Back to Part Time

Sacramento — The lawmakers have left town and gone home. And that's where they should stay until January.

They won't. They'll be back on Aug. 18 to plow through the final four weeks of this year's legislative session -- which is the first half of a two-year session.

This is considered a "full-time" legislature, one of only 10 in the country. All in big states.

The biggest state, I've now concluded, should downgrade its Legislature to part time.

If the Legislature can't be reformed, it should be restrained. Damage contained. Losses cut.

Roughly 2,700 bills still are floating around the Capitol. How many of these are really needed by anybody except the special interests that bankroll politicians? Maybe a dozen.

Nearly 1,500 bills already have been passed by at least one house -- the most important and abhorrent being the $99-billion state budget.

This wasn't a budget; it was an IOU. What Gov. Gray Davis signed Saturday was a credit-card charge slip.

"It was the best we could do," legislative leaders insist. Yes, and that's the trouble.

The budget, again, wasn't even on time -- not passed until 29 days into the fiscal year, 44 days past the legislators' constitutional deadline.

It's not entirely the legislators' fault. They're mostly good people working in a rotten system. Some of it has been self-created. But much has been imposed by voters -- most notably with term limits. These limits -- six years in the Assembly, eight in the Senate -- need to be lengthened. Maybe to 12 or 16 years total, pick a house.

Inexperience and job insecurity -- eyes always out for the next career move -- aren't the only unintended consequences of term limits. There's a destructive lack of institutional pride -- of inherent desire, nurtured by longevity, to ensure that the Legislature succeeds. Short-timers are narrowly focused on the mirror.

Other reforms also are needed, including:

* Closed primaries should be reopened to produce more moderate, pragmatic legislators. The political parties have fought this ferociously, but former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and state Controller Steve Westly are planning a 2004 ballot initiative.

* Redistricting needs to be seized from the Legislature and handed to an independent commission, probably appointed by the state Supreme Court. The lawmakers' 2001 gerrymandering produced districts that protect the party status quo while electing ideological extremists.