The suggestion by Charles Owens that Michigan adopt a part-time legislature is a good one. If you’re in favor of some fiscal sanity, as well as a smaller scope of government, the idea of a part-time legislature has an intuitive appeal. Career politicians have helped bring Michigan and many other states to the brink.
As it turns out, a pair of academics have cranked out the numbers and confirmed that “non-professional” legislatures spend less.
People who study legislatures for a living use three different qualities to define a “professional” legislature: a high annual salary for members, spending many days in session, and having a large support staff. In short, a “professional” legislature is one in which you can earn a decent living by spending a large amount of time in session, with lots of helpers.
As a fiscal conservative, I want to know,”Do part-time, non-professional legislatures spend less?” Yes. That’s the conclusion of Stephanie Owings of the U.S. Naval Academy and Rainald Borck of Humboldt University of Berlin, who looked at the question a couple of years ago.
Non-professional legislatures–I call them citizen legislatures–do have one quality that might cause them to spend more. Without a lot of support staff around, citizen legislators might need to rely more on interest groups for input. Since most interest groups want government to spend more, not less, this fact might cause part-timers to spend more than those who have the staff and time to cull the many demands put on legislatures.
But this pro-spending bias (if it is in fact real) is overwhelmed by other factors. If you spend more time in session, you’ll have more opportunities to become skilled in passing legislation, more opportunities to develop the trust with other members that leads to deal-making (log-rolling), and more occasions to succumb to the culture of spending.
In addition, higher pay rates make legislative service an attractive career prospect. People who have a financial and career interest in staying in office will want to keep on the good side of interest groups that have cash to spend on campaign donations.
There are of course other factors that can lead to a larger state budget, such as a larger state population. But even after accounting for these factors, Owings and Borck say, the simple fact of having a “professional” legislature increases state spending by 12 percent.
Now, a note about Minnesota. Owens says “Minnesota, a state that is demographically very similar to Michigan … functions just fine with a part time legislature.”
http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/watercooler/index.php?blogid=383
It does and it doesn’t. Minnesota is doing well in that its residents have a higher-than-average income. It also has a good bond rating, and has gone through at least the last two legislative sessions without an income-tax hike. But Minnesota also has a significant structural deficit that won’t disappear anytime soon.
So perhaps a citizen legislature isn’t a guarantee that you won’t go over the cliff. Maybe you’ll just go over it later than everyone else.
Published at the Detroit News:
http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/watercooler/index.php?blogid=383