Bill Limit in Legislature
Your Feb. 24 editorial on term limits suggests that forced turnover of membership explains why “the Assembly has been slower getting down to legislative business than in the past.” I suspect that the culprit here is not term limits, but bill limits. The Legislature’s bill limits are problematic, and may be unconstitutional.
Under new rules, each Assembly member will be allowed 30 bills in the current two-year session, and each senator will be allowed 65. That works out to 2,400 bills in the Assembly, and 2,600 in the Senate. This shouldn’t cramp the Senate’s style, as only 2,138 and 2,178 bills were introduced there in the last two sessions. But the Assembly will certainly feel a pinch: Its members introduced 3,838 and 3,504 bills in those sessions.
The main problem with this is that good but modest ideas will be passed over. The deadline for introducing bills was Feb. 28.
Legislatures may surely pass rules regarding how and when they will consider bills, but it is likely unconstitutional to limit the number of ideas that may be considered at all. When bad ideas are introduced, members can vote no.
DAVID A. HOLTZMAN, Oakland
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