OTHER COMMENTARY : A Sentence to Back Benches

Will the quality of the legislation decline and will special interests gain more influence because legislators will have less experience and tenure?

Probably not.

The legislative tempo is largely dictated by a few leaders. Most legislators, even now, specialize in only one or two areas of legislation. They have and will continue to rely up their colleagues, the administration and, yes, interest groups for information and expert opinion.

Don’t believe that most freshman legislators arrive in Sacramento as naive school kids. They may not know all the issues or pitfalls of Sacramento, but they couldn’t have gotten elected without some smarts.

The reduction in staff services may have a more noticeable effect. It is true that the legislative staffs have grown enormously in recent years, but the demands of constituents for services have grown as well. While there hasn’t been a thorough review of staff needs, it may be that Proposition 140 has dictated such drastic cuts that it threatens what could be a federal constitutional right to a state legislature of equal capability as the executive and judicial branches of government.