| There was nothing of substance really accomplished today, except for Asm. Mike Davis making everybody a smidge uncomfortable with his address to the Assembly describing what, ahem, a lot of men around the world felt for Farah Fawcett. So, the Legislature will be back in session tomorrow trying to either get the Senate and Arnold to agree to some temporary fix to avoid IOUs or an actual budget solution. Note that St. Abel doesn't have any big news for the twittersphere.
But, as the Senate is unable to agree to the Assembly's bipartisan IOU avoidance measures or come up with their own solution, a bigger question comes to mind: Why do we have a Senate? Now that's not to say that I prefer one body to the other, it's not like there's a huge difference. And that's exactly the point. There isn't much difference.
To be precise, there are a few minor differences. The Senate approves the Governor's nominees. And, well, that's about all for matters of substance.
At one point, the Senate had a very different makeup. It was a once a one-per-county thing, with LA County citizens receiving about 1/500 of the representation as some rural counties. But Reynolds v. Sims changed all that by striking down state legislative systems with unequal representation.
At this point, Senate districts are basically just two Assembly districts, or gerrymandered approximations thereof. Assembly districts themselves are too large, but Senate districts are completely unmanageable. They are substantially larger than Congressional districts, and even the most present Senators can't get to all the events in the District.
While perhaps not the most pressing reform, it is about time that we consider going with the unicameral legislature. Even if we kept the same number of legislators, we could have substantially smaller districts and allow the legislators more contact with their constituents.
Furthermore, it would reduce some of the legislative merry go round if done in concert with some sort of term limits reform. While I would prefer the elimination of all term limits, you could argue that perhaps allowing legislators to serve 12 years in one chamber would make for a more effective legislature.
So, if we ever do get around to that Constitutional Convention, how about we get to fixing problem # 487 with California's government? |
