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12/02/2014 11:00 PMI want to share with you some legislative reform bills I introduced during my decade as your state senator, which did not pass and generally were not even taken up by a committee. Connecticut is the fourth-smallest state in the United States with a total population of about 3.5 million, and yet we have two separate houses of the legislature, comprising 187 state legislators. Several years ago, I visited Nebraska to look at its unicameral (one-house) legislature and was amazed at its efficiency and effectiveness. Thereafter, I introduced a unicameral legislative bill, but it got no public hearing. I could well envision in Hartford a one-house legislature with 60 state legislators each serving about 50,000 residents.
Many state legislators in Connecticut, as well as other states, serve for 20 and more years. With exceptions, that longevity results in a loss of energy and a vacuum of new ideas. For some years, I have proposed term limits whereby state senators would serve three terms of four years each, and state representatives would serve six terms of two years each. Again, that bill has never received a hearing.
Connecticut, like many states, lacks healthy competition in many of its state legislative campaigns. The great majority of legislative districts are one-party districts, primarily the Democrats in the metropolitan areas and the Republicans in parts of Fairfield County and in the more rural areas. Redistricting intentionally avoids combining part of a metropolitan area with part of a rural area as one district. In more than one-third of our legislative districts, the incumbent legislator has no opponent or no major party opponent. The reason for our redistricting plans is that they are totally controlled by the legislative leaders of the two parties whose primary goal is to bring back incumbents every two years. Competition would be built instead by creating an independent redistricting commission without legislative or political leaders. Again, my bill to do that has not received any hearing.
There have been ethics problems in the Connecticut General Assembly, and indeed in the last several years three of my Senate colleagues have been convicted of crimes and have involuntarily been ousted from the Senate. The legislatures of other states, as well as Congress, have enacted codes of ethics and ethics committees to enforce that code. I have introduced such a bill in each of the last 10 years. In a couple of those years, the bill did clear committee, but was not taken up on the floor of either the Senate or the House.
As a result of my retirement, I urge you to press for some or all of these bills, which, from my experience, will produce a leaner and better state legislature. Go for it!