Dave Zweifel: Listen up on part-time Legislature

Dave Zweifel  —  11/19/2008 5:33 am

If reaction to my recent column that it's time for Wisconsin to return to a part-time Legislature is any indication, state legislators need to pay attention.

People out there -- conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats -- are convinced that a full-time Legislature has contributed to the dysfunction of our politics and is responsible for all too many bad decisions that have the state in financial turmoil.

Wisconsin is just one of 10 states in which the Legislature is deemed to be full time. With pay and per diems, many legislators can earn more than $60,000 a year plus enjoy excellent pension and health insurance benefits. It's not a fortune, true, but it's enough to allow a legislator to earn a comfortable living at the public trough.

The advent of the full-time Legislature in our state had its origins about 35 years ago around the time Wisconsin voters decided to increase the governor's term from two years to four years. Since a governor with a four-year hold on the office can probably wield more political power, legislators decided to pay themselves more so that they could stick around Madison longer and keep an eye on things.

Up until then, Wisconsin legislators came to Madison for a few weeks each biennium, passed or killed bills that dealt with pressing state issues, and crafted a budget that would meet the state's needs for the next two years. Because the representatives and senators were usually home in their respective districts, small staffs of secretaries and clerks kept watch in the Capitol, answering phone calls and forwarding messages and letters.

That all started to change in the '70s. Suddenly, legislative sessions were being scheduled year round and the standing committees were meeting constantly.

And those skeleton staffs that once worked in the Capitol where legislators shared offices and secretaries had now ballooned to full-time staffs for each of the 132 legislators. A story we ran a few years ago showed that in 20 years the cost of legislative staffs had jumped 222 percent and now cost taxpayers more than $65 million a year.

As we said in an editorial back then, the increased costs might be justified if there had been a corresponding 222 percent increase in legislative output.

But, of course, there hasn't been. For all the full-time help pumping out letters, e-mails and press releases to serve their full-time bosses, we've probably got less, not more, serious legislation that has served the public interest. Budget battles now last all year, missing deadlines and forcing financial crises on the workings of state government. And every two years we watch legislators push the budget problems under the rug, to where we now have a structural deficit that is approaching $5 billion.

The every-10-year job of reapportioning the state to account for changes in population invariably winds up in court -- again at taxpayer expense -- because these full-time "public servants" can't agree.

Instead of working on solutions to fix state problems that continue to fester, we instead witness scandals of legislators using taxpayer-paid help to serve their personal campaigns.

In other words, a full-time Legislature has not brought progress to Wisconsin government as we were told it would. It has instead brought regression -- and millions of dollars in added costs.

It's time for some courageous legislative leaders to step forward and begin the process to dismantle the full-time apparatus that has made a mockery of what was once considered one of the country's most enlightened state governments.

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Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times.

Dave Zweifel  —  11/19/2008 5:33 am