So in the 2011-2012 General Assembly class, roughly 1 in 4 legislators were lawyers. Now, that’s a considerable over-representation. Thus it’s not surprising to me that the legislature typically starts its session about the time court gets out.
Lawyers are also adept at writing laws, typically in legalese (despite there being more efficient and understandable ways to write legally binding documents in plain English). Any legislator or citizen that wishes to pass a bill must likewise be able to write in language understandable to lawyers, but much more difficult to parse for the average person.
This over-representation of the legal profession (and other professions) has led some to point out that our legislature is vastly different from the people it represents. This is a national phenomenon, as RIPR’s Ian Donnis pointed out in October. Mr. Donnis limited his discussion to Rhode Island’s federal officers, but our farm team, state government, is also vastly different from the people it represents. So the question is, how do you create a legislature more representative of the people of Rhode Island?
Moderate Party Chair Ken Block has a “solution”: shorten the legislature’s amount of time in office to three months a year. That idea might appeal to the small-government types Mr. Block sort-of represents, but it’s ultimately irrelevant to the question above. Whether it’s one day or twelve months without holidays or weekends, how often the legislature meets is not going to.
We have to make Rhode Island’s legislature more representative of its people.
Yet, there remains little incentive to serve. Beyond the amount of abuse you’re going to take (we can argue whether that abuse is warranted or not), the legislature is a demanding job for little pay. Your constituents need your assistance at all hours, regardless of whether you have cows to milk or legal documents to file. You are reasonably likely to spend the period from June to November running for office; though a number are fortunate enough that Rhode Islander apathy and Democratic inertia combine to allow them to run unopposed or avoid either a primary or general election.
A problem small-government types like Mr. Block run up against is that we consider that legislative work is “public service.” So is fire-fighting, police work, or any of the other various services that governments provide. Yet all of those workers are compensated. There has been so much antagonism towards compensation for RI legislators that 30 lawmakers refused their mandated raise. While far too many of us struggle to make ends meet, these lawmakers are literally turning down money.
Recognizing that there is a disconnect between the constituent and their representative, that the latter is in a privileged position, hurts no one. But attempting to pass off that the solution to this issue is halving the number of months the legislature serves is disingenuous at best and intentionally misleading at worst.
Few working people have both the time to take off or the money to spend to mount an effective campaign against incumbents. Among those that can, even fewer are likely to find employers who are willing to let them leave work early, or take a break to field constituent calls. Is it any wonder why such a system favors the wealthy, the different, the unrepresentative would-be representative?
We need to reform our campaign finance laws, and we need a wage for our lawmakers that would allow them to take care of themselves and their families while being able to give their full undivided attention to the needs of their constituents and their state. Until then, we will have to rely on those extraordinary individuals that heed these words from Rep. Teresa Tanzi’s keynote speech to Netroots Nation 2012:
You need to join me. Take the next step, run for office. Yes, you. The one with the family, the job, the crushing load of schoolwork, the fuller than full plate. YOU! Anything less than full participation will not be enough.Now, can you hear I’m talking to you? I need you standing beside me when the doors close to the public, and the negotiations begin. I need you sitting beside me, after the debate ends, the votes are taken and a proposal becomes law. I need your voice to be the voice of all the women, families and children who are voiceless and invisible. I need you to join me. You. I am talking to you.
If you read the Projo story that gushed about Mr. Block yesterday, you can see the same patterns repeated. Here they are: we need to transfer wealth from the working people to the business class ( ie “the job creators). This can be done by extending the working hours, and working days for working people at the same time as cutting their benefits. Simultaneously, cut the tax burden on the business class so they can keep more of “their” wealth and then jobs will somehow magically appear.
Of course, we’ve seen this story before.
now getting rid of elected school committees? Hmmmmm, now there’s a thought……
Are elected school committees really the problem? I could point you to a few things that Providence’s unelected school board has done that are less than ideal. Firing all the teachers in Providence, for instance, was quite uncool.
As usual, anyone that doesn’t actually grovel at the feet of Pat Crowley is lambasted with the typical corporate evil rhetoric. As for a full time legislature, I’m not sure even the most blind voters are ready to give any of these people full time salary and benefits. Given the pessimism in this state and past performance, it would be a hard sell.
I defy you to find anywhere in anything I have ever done a single reference to small government. I love it when people just make S#$% up. Smear by association – even if the association is false. FOX News is looking for some new talent.
I believe that we are actually understaffed in our government. I find it wrong that the Governor’s office runs with fewer people than have been budgeted. We certainly don’t get our best efforts when the people doing the work are totally strung out. I also feel that the silly disinclination to pay for talent in government is also wrong.
It is fascinating that Pat is against some basic reforms which will improve the educational outcomes of our kids. A great many of the teachers he represents agree with some of the ideas we (the Small Business Association of NE) have proposed. Why do we let certain districts include time spent traveling between classes as ‘educational time’? I am certain Pat is aware of the push nationwide to increase the number of educational hours kids receive on an annual basis. I am certain that the fact that 70% of incoming frosh at CCRI need remediation – and that a great many of that 70% have 5th grade skills – is as horrifying to Pat as it is to most critically thinking individuals. We need to get this fixed.
Pat keeps coming back to the tired ‘give away to the rich bastard’ argument, which is just a complete smokescreen to the cold hard reality of needing to be competitive with our neighboring states. The true irony in all of this is that the hated income tax reform of 2010 actually increased our tax revenues while positioning RI competitively with our neighbors.
It is clearly a waste of time to spend a whole of energy having these conversations here, and I will stop now. Pat will say something else inflammatory and likely untrue, and then all of the usual folks will duke it out for a few days with nothing to show for it at the end.
Ken, it’s the 2006 income tax cuts for the wealthy that progressives, fiscal conservatives, and moderates hate, not the 2010 reform. The 2010 tax reform was nowhere near as regressive as the 2006 law. The 2010 changes kept the top rate at 6% instead of allowing it to fall to 5.5%, as it would have under the 2006 law. They also produced income deep tax cuts for the upper middle class. If you count the capital gains fix in the 2010 reforms, which progressives support, then the 2010 changes weren’t the budget-wrecking disaster that the 2006 tax cuts for the rich were.
The effect of the 2006 changes were devastating. There’s really no way around that.
www.rifuture.org//ri-what-went-wrong-income-tax-cuts-for-the-rich.html
Mr. Bell is correct. The “simplification” argument of the 2006, regressive tax reform shows a frighteningly direct correlation between the decrease in middle class income and the increase in middle and lower class taxes in order to compensate for the tax reductions for the “job creators” who, by the way, have done a truly excellent service to the state in job creation. Well … we have a lower percentage of unemployment than Nevada.