You can’t manage if you can’t measure it, goes to the old management theory. But it doesn’t work smoothly in some places.
Like the Idaho Legislature.
If you’re inside the legislative bubble, one of the most common and persistent questions – and this is true going back generations, and probably in legislatures all over – is: When do we get out of here? For several decades, the Idaho Legislature has set, long before the session ever begins, a target date for adjournment (sine die, in the jargon). That’s the point by which, leaders figure, lawmakers should be able to wrap up business. This year the target was March 21.
You may have noticed that they didn’t hit that mark, and at this writing they’re still going strong. Odds are they have another week or more left to go. Last year the target was March 22; they didn’t hit that one either. In fact, they usually don’t.
There’s usually some self-flagellation and talk by critics about wasting money on a too-long session. I don’t see it that way. True, the legislature sometimes has wasted some money – not large amounts, in the statewide scheme of things – in the course of hanging around longer than they really needed to. But I see the “targets” as a term of art, a calendar notation to indicate simply that things should be winding down around then.
Legislatures should keep after their work as long as they need to get it done properly. Efficiency is a virtue, but not at the expense of rushing to hasty and poorly thought-out decisions. (Which they nonetheless … well, that’s a subject for another time.) So I won’t knock them for taking a few more days than they might have planned.
There’s another oft-noted area of measure you can apply to legislatures: Volume of legislation. For whatever reason, many state legislatures (Oregon is another example) this year have been producing larger than usual numbers of measures: Bills, resolutions, memorials and so on.
In Idaho, the legislature as of March 28 (date of the most recent report on totals as this is written) showed that 1,003 new pieces of legislation have been formally prepared through the state system. That’s a little staggering. From most decades past, the number seemed to habitually run in the 600s and 700s. Four years ago, that number was 803, so in the last four years the number of new pieces of legislation pushed through into introductable format (run through legislative staff who put it in proper legal format) has increased by a quarter.
That number doesn’t include other pieces of legislature – “changes, amendments. and engrossments” – which also are prepared, and when they’re added, the number for this year for all new legislation rises to 1,323. That compares to 976 from four years ago, also a really large increase.
Little wonder there seems to be more discussion about putting ceilings on the number of measures that can be drafted and introduced in a session. (Many other states do have such practical limitations; some restrict individual legislators to introducing no more than a specific number of measures.)
If that happens, it wouldn’t necessarily affect the volume of new laws the public sees and actually has to live with. As of March 28, the legislature had actually passed (approved in both chambers and sent to the governor) just 250 bills, which is fewer than in any of the three previous sessions. Actual productivity, then, as opposed to generating a lot of paper on the front end, might be down a bit this year.
Does any of that matter?
I would say, not much. What’s important about the legislature’s work, or at least what ought to be considered most important, is not the quantity of the work but rather the quality. How well considered is the legislation?
More on that soon.
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