Anyone for a shorter legislative session?
Right about now, probably a lot of members of Colorado’s Legislature would say yes as they face weeks more before the session ends next month. A lot of rank-and-file Coloradans wouldn’t mind, either, even if only to nudge bloviating pols away from the podium and out of the news cycle a bit sooner.
And it just might keep a lot of those same pols from abandoning their seats midterm, which arguably would shore up democracy in our state.
More than a few state lawmakers have quit in recent years after concluding that service in Colorado’s part-time, “citizen Legislature” makes it difficult to maintain their full-time careers outside elective office. And they can’t afford to live on meager legislative pay alone.
Their frequent resignations before their terms in office are over have led to an alarmingly high rate of replacements — appointed by vacancy committees — representing Coloradans.
In fact, an analysis by Colorado Politics this year found that of the 100 members in the Colorado General Assembly, almost a third weren’t originally elected by their constituents. Fully 28 of them were picked by a vacancy committee to serve out the term of members who had resigned early. Of those 28, seven have yet to face voters.
It’s not exactly the “representative democracy” you were taught about in high school civics.
Last week, lawmakers advanced a proposal to bar candidates who enter the Legislature as vacancy appointments from running for their seats in the next general election.
But the idea — which, if approved by lawmakers, also would have to face voters because it amends the state constitution — addresses only part of the problem. Vacancy committee appointees still would represent voters who didn’t elect them, but only for a limited time.
It wouldn’t tackle the underlying issue — the high turnover that leads to so many vacancy committee picks in the first place.
So, how about lightening the load on lawmakers, instead? What if we gave members of the Legislature less reason to resign to begin with by shortening the time they had to spend each year away from their day jobs and, for many of them, away from their homes and families?
As we noted here not long ago, four U.S. states, including Texas, the nation’s second most populous, meet every other year.
Colorado’s neighbor Wyoming meets every year but reserves every other year for addressing only its state budget. Those budget sessions usually last 20 days while Wyoming’s general legislative sessions in the intervening years are capped at 40 days.
Might some version of those approaches offer an incentive for Colorado lawmakers to stay in office? It, too, would take a voter-enacted change to our state’s constitution, but it would serve more effectively to reduce the use of vacancy committees by tackling a root cause of the problem.
By the way, shorter or fewer legislative sessions not only would mean fewer disruptions for the careers and family life of lawmakers — it also would give them less time to create programs, spend tax dollars and wreak regulatory havoc. So, it would kill two birds with one stone.
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