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February 18, 2009 05:56 AM UTC

Unicameral Future?

  • 6 Comments
  • by: Bondo

An interesting article out of Maine over a proposed Amendment to eliminate the state’s Senate.

Since our own state is in dire need of a Constitutional Convention, I wonder if we should consider such a thing in Colorado. For better or worse, the Federal government has a sane reason for having a bicameral legislature…the two are elected in strikingly different ways (one based on population, one even across states).

This is not the case in Colorado where both House and Senate are apportioned by population. Due to differing district boundaries you sometimes get different results, but in theory the second chamber should be redundant. This second chamber means more legislator costs, more staff costs, and of course, the potential for more gridlock.

A second suggestion in the article is about reducing the size of a chamber in order to reduce costs. This strikes me as making much less sense. Though technology does allow one individual to better serve a larger constituency, it still is effective to minimize the size of districts within reason, as smaller districts tend to increase the proportionality of the chamber.

Rather, I would limit the move as being motivated by cost savings. I think if we stuck with a single, 100 person chamber, we might also consider investing the savings from eliminating the second chamber to make the first more professional. That means more staff dedicated to the one chamber including partisan staff and individual legislator staff. That means longer legislative sessions and higher legislator pay.

Anyway, what says you all?

Should Colorado Eliminate A Chamber?

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6 thoughts on “Unicameral Future?

  1. We don’t want to be like Nebraska, do we?  🙂

    I don’t know if a unicam would be “better,” but it’s an interesting idea.  It works well in Nebraska…no reason it wouldn’t work elsewhere…

    It also creates a few nerdy questions.  How long would terms be?  If four years, when would elections be?  Same time as the Gub election or opposite?  Or maybe a rotating 4-4-2 system?  Fun, fun, fun…

    If it was up to me, I’d go with 40 districts, two ‘senators’ from each, four year terms, one seat in each district up every two years, 12 year term limits.  

    And absolutely make the operation more professional.  No offense folks, but the way the leg runs is bush league…

  2. We have problems here but the fact that we have two houses is not one of them. And there is value in one body that has to run for election every 2 years while the other has half it’s members not running each election.

    1. The thing I wonder about this change is whether there would be a particular group that would oppose. Switching to a single chamber would not really have a partisan effect, and the Republicans might like it for the “shrinking government” angle.

      And if all Democrats were like me (small d democrats), they’d favor changing institutions to remove barriers to majority rule that don’t serve the purpose of minority right protection, i.e. making things more parliamentary. Things like longer terms and offset terms are devices meant to make government less responsive to the people.

      Now, this is not the best example of it, but sometimes if people say these institutional changes aren’t the most important thing because of x or y issue, I actually have to partly disagree because institutional changes at various levels of government can make it much easier to respond to those other important issues more effectively.

      1. “I would limit the move as being motivated by cost savings. I think if we stuck with a single, 100 person chamber, we might also consider investing the savings from eliminating the second chamber to make the first more professional. That means more staff dedicated to the one chamber including partisan staff and individual legislator staff. That means longer legislative sessions and higher legislator pay.”

        Cost savings in the legislative process is among the weakest arguments.

        One has to pay to remodel the capital, spend time rewriting and printing new legislative rules, hold hearings on amending the constitution, revised statutes related to the legislative and electoral process, conduct an election on the issue, and redistrict all of the state’s legislative seats.

        Why it would cost a different amount to have 100 legislators in one chamber rather than two, is unclear.  Neither more staff or salaries would be freed up.  The chambers already share many staff function as it is now.

        I favor more staff and higher legislative pay, which don’t take constitutional amendments.  I’d like a longer session, but this would be harder to achieve since it requires a constitutional amendment and no crisis has resulted from the current system.

        The main enduring argument for bicameralism is to slow down the legislative process, provide more opportunities for review, and to make it harder to ambush opponents of legisltion (or proponents) in the legislative process.

        Simply put, there are other things much more wrong with our state’s constitution (mostly fiscal rules).

        The cost savings, if any, would result from a loss of an ability to put in spending provisions in conference committee hearings followed by up or down votes.  In a unicameral legislature, all spending would face majority vote.  But, since Colorado has a line item veto and a joint budget committee, this is not nearly the issue here that it is in the federal government.

        1. I don’t really care about the cost savings. I’m not saying that is the reason to change. But most of your analysis is based on a status quo default.

          I don’t like to think that way. It makes it too easy to stick with sub-par outcomes because the benefit of the optimal outcome may not be vastly superior. If you were creating a new state constitution for a new state, would you really argue that a bicameral system is useful? What arguments would you make? I would argue that the “slowing down” effect of a second chamber makes it less democratic.

          Though I don’t know why the capitol would have to be redesigned (except perhaps if you are saying the House wouldn’t hold 100 legislators…but I was abstracting in saying 100, we could keep the House at 65 and just get rid of the Senate and use the Senate chamber much as the old Supreme Court room. And as to the cost of change, I framed my original statement as “we will probably need a constitutional convention anyway” so there is no particularly greater cost for each additional proposal, including a longer session.

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