Governor Gives an Old Idea a Boost

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested that serving in the California Legislature should not be a full-time job, it gave new life to Jim Bouskos’ stalled political dream.

“Believe me, he did me a world of good,” said the Fresno business consultant and real estate developer, who is promoting the idea of a one-house, 100-member legislature that would meet for six months a year.

California is one of four states with a full-time legislature, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Lawmakers earn $99,000 a year -- the best-paid legislators in the nation. Voters approved going full time in 1966.

But Schwarzenegger said it might be time to reconsider. While on vacation in Hawaii recently, he told The Times that the Legislature “already doesn’t have enough to do ... I want to make the Legislature a part-time legislature.” He complained that lawmakers wrote “strange bills.”

The governor did not endorse Bouskos’ plan or any other. But the Fresno businessman said, “I think he was sending the Legislature a message that there is an alternative out there.”

The idea is attractive to others as well. Lew Uhler, head of the National Tax Limitation Committee, which supported enactment of legislative term limits in 1990, said his organization is talking about a ballot plan that would return lawmakers to part-time careers in the Capitol, perhaps meeting only several days each month.

California “already has a part-time legislature,” Uhler said. “They work less than teachers do and get paid a lot more.”

As could be expected, the governor’s remarks fell flat in the Legislature, whose members have argued over the years that a state of nearly 36 million people, multibillion-dollar budgets and the world’s fifth-largest economy demands a full-time legislature able to tackle complicated issues as they emerge. They contend that a part-time body would give the governor too much freedom to act when they are not in session.

Assemblyman Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove), who must leave office in November because of term limits, said he did not believe that returning the Legislature to a part-time body would resolve much.

“Given the state has a $100-billion budget, I’m not so sure a part-time legislature makes sense,” he said. Lawmakers “would still introduce the same legislation that got us here to begin with. And, with a greater amount of time in between sessions, there would be less time to correct the problems.”

The governor did not specify any “strange bills,” but offbeat legislation never has been in short supply, such as a recent law that prohibits pet stores and other vendors from selling unweaned parrots.

Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco), who was first elected to the Legislature in 1964 when it was a part-time organization, joked Monday that merely because lawmakers were to work less time would not mean that their bills would be any more rational.

“The dumbest bill I’ve ever recalled was introduced during a part-time legislature that would have made committing suicide a misdemeanor,” said Burton, who once carried a bill that would have made being poor a crime.

In 1966, the notion of creating the nation’s first full-time legislature got off to a bipartisan start. Gov. Pat Brown, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, signed on as the lead proponents of a ballot measure known as Proposition 1A.

The proposition, recommended by a commission and adopted by the Legislature, rewrote parts of the state Constitution. In the voter pamphlet explaining the measure, proponents offered only 48 words directly addressing the legislative issue. They said change was needed so that each year the Legislature would “consider all problems facing California.” Voters approved it overwhelmingly, 73.5% to 26.5%. It would take a constitutional amendment to change it again.

Proposition 1A also abolished the constitutional prohibition against lawmakers setting their own salaries and granted them that power, but limited increases to 5% a year. Currently, a citizens commission determines the salaries of legislators and statewide officers.

In addition to the $99,000 a year for being Assembly and Senate members, leaders of the two houses are paid extra. Senate leader Burton and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) are paid $113,850 a year. The minority and majority floor leaders in each house receive $106,425 annually.

Most lawmakers also accept $140 a day in tax-free compensation for expenses while in session, drive state-leased automobiles and are issued credit cards for unlimited gasoline and telephone charges. During sessions, members can make one round-trip flight a week to their home districts at taxpayer expense.

When such costs as staff salaries, travel, employee benefits, office redecorating, business meals, deliveries, postage, subscriptions and office supplies are added, the price tag for the Legislature can surpass $200 million a year.

In 2002, the last year for which audited figures are available, the 80-member Assembly spent $105.6 million. Expenditures by the 40-member Senate totaled almost $75 million. This year, the Assembly is expected to spend roughly $118.4 million; the Senate will spend about $87 million.

In the drive to professionalize legislative staff members, the Assembly, under legendary Speaker Jesse M. Unruh (D-Inglewood), took the lead, hiring a nonpartisan cadre of specialists in taxes, transportation, health and other policy areas as committee consultants. Some held doctorates. They were directed to provide factual, objective information and analyses without regard to whether the house was run by Democrats or Republicans.

The tradition-bound and sometimes more cautious Senate accepted the changes, but more slowly.

In the 1970s, the California Legislature served as a prototype for other states, and was sometimes recognized as the best in the country. But that reputation began to tarnish in the 1980s, when campaign fundraising scandals led to an FBI investigation of corruption. As a result, several lawmakers went to prison and California’s became derisively nicknamed “the best legislature money can buy.”

The National Conference of State Legislatures lists three other populous states -- Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania -- as having full-time legislative bodies with members spending 80% of their time on legislative business and paid enough to not need outside jobs.

With California at $99,000 a year, New York follows at $79,500; Michigan is next at $77,400; and Pennsylvania is at $64,638.

Bouskos, the Fresno businessman, estimates that his plan for a smaller unicameral Legislature would save almost $200 million annually. Lawmakers would serve unlimited two-year terms and give up state-subsidized cars. The measure would limit the number of committees and staffers and restrict mileage and expense compensation.

A member of the state’s Little Hoover Commission watchdog agency in the 1980s, Bouskos had called off gathering the 598,105 voter signatures needed to qualify his plan for this year’s ballot because he could not afford to pay signature gatherers and his measure had no voter awareness in Southern California.

Then, along came Schwarzenegger’s surprise vacation pronouncement, which has generated more publicity for his idea than Bouskos said he had ever expected.

Now re-energized by the jump start from the governor, Bouskos said he will aim the plan for the 2006 ballot, calling Schwarzenegger’s declaration a “boost for me.”