Part-Time Legislature Initiative: Time to Put a Stake in It

The part-time legislature initiative is dead. Sorta.

Proponents of the initiative submitted their first version of part-time legislature to AG in early summer and received title and summary from the AG on July 10. They subsequently submitted a revised initiative (adding a 50 percent pay cut for legislators) on September 11. The AG has not yet issued a new title and summary for the revised initiative. If the AG and the LAO take the full time alloted to them, that will be about the last week of October or first week of November.

Proponents will not be able to use any of the signatures from their first version to help qualify their revised version. And they can't start collecting new signatures on their revised version until a revised title and summary is issued.

When it is issued, proponents will then have until April 16 to collect signatures. They will need to collect around 1.2 million signatures to be sure they can qualify via random sample -- a tall task in a short period of time.

In other words, the thousands of petitions hawked on the John & Ken Show and by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association are headed for the shredder. And it means proponents will have even less time to qualify for the November 2010 ballot.

It can still happen, of course. But if history is any guide, it will cost proponents more to get the signatures. There was no Sugar Daddy to write a fat check for the initiative during the first go' round, and the added costs and shorter timeline will make it even more difficult to qualify by mid-April.

Even ultra-right wing initiative funders can smell a skunk.

The PPIC http://www.ppic.org/main/pressrelease.asp?i=969 found that only 23 percent of voters support a part-time legislature in its early September poll. And while the Field Poll didn't test it this month, another similar idea (to create a unicameral legislature) was overwhelmingly opposed.

Proponents of the revised initiative are likely to employ the same strategy as former Tennessee Governor and now U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander used during his run for President in 1994. His demand on the stump to "cut their pay and send them home" was a crowd pleaser until voters figured it out there was no chance of luring the teacher-, businessowner- or farmer-statesmen for whom proponents nostalgically yearn to run for public office. What schools, businesses, or farms, after all, can let people go more than six months? Or in this era of Special Sessions, for endless and unpredictable times throughout the year? Only the idle rich need apply; other states with part-time legislatures lack the diversity in income, background, and ethnicity that California's full-time legislature has.

The bottom line: The "new and improved" part-time legislature initiative remains a bad idea.