We believe that in many cases in the
United States legislatures are larger
than desirable."
The Committee on Economic Develop-
ment is a conservative organization. It has
this to say on size, at page 36:
"Most legislatures are far too large;
only ten have 100 members or less, while
eight have over 200. New Hampshire has
one legislator for every 1500 inhabitants
in its lower house, in contrast to one for
every 200,000 in California. There is
little merit in trying to set an arbitrary
optimum on the number of people each
member of the legislature should repre-
sent, but the size of each body affects its
ability to function effectively. Fewer
members permit more individual par-
ticipation, improve deliberation, elevate
the importance—and hence the quality—
of membership, lead to better compensa-
tion, and facilitate stronger staffings. In
our view, no legislature should have
more than 100 members. Small states and
those with unicameral systems may ob-
tain adequate representation with far
fewer than that number."
The order of the day really is well paid
professional legislators, people who would
concentrate upon representation at state
levels, and not numbers but quality. The
adoption of compulsory home rule will cer-
tainly emphasize the state legislative char-
acter of the state legislator.
Herbert L. Wilson, Director of the South-
ern Office of the Council of State Govern-
ments, in a speech before the Texas legis-
lature, said this:
"While the move is proceeding at a
different pace from one state to another,
since, of course states differ widely in the
complexity of the problems which their
legislatures face, the unmistakable fact
is that our law-makers are having to de-
vote increasing amounts of time to the
core work of legislating. Consequently,
the extent to which it will be possible to
retain the values of the 'citizen-legislator'
tradition and to enable young and mid-
dle-aged people to combine legislative
service with their professional and busi-
ness careers, are questions of major im-
portance which more and more States
will have to face during the coming
years."
We are face to face with that situation
at the moment.
The maximum membership should be
fixed in the Constitution at a relatively low |
level, and I think we can look at the prac-
tical examples of New Jersey, which is a
State comparable in size to Maryland,
which has just adopted the 40-80 ratio;
and to California, a large State, maybe 20
million people, which has adopted this plan
as a practical method of securing a fair
type of representation and effective organ-
ization.
I think that we simply will not be doing
anything if we organize our legislature so
that we will have bodies in which the large
portion of the membership is second-class
citizens, shall we say.
Thank you very much.
THE CHAIRMAN: Are there any ques-
tions of the minority spokesman for pur-
poses of clarification of the Minority Re-
port?
Delegate Kahl.
DELEGATE KAHL: Senator James, I
am a little nebulous about how this 40-80
membership would run. Would you explain
that a little more, please?
DELEGATE JAMES: We simply have
40 senatorial districts in the State, and
they would be single-member districts. Is
that the point you wanted clarified?
DELEGATE KAHL: Yes.
THE CHAIRMAN: Does that answer
your question?
DELEGATE KAHL: Yes.
THE CHAIRMAN: Are there any
further questions?
Delegate Bushong.
DELEGATE BUSHONG: I would like
to ask Senator James how many counties
would lose any representation?
DELEGATE JAMES: I think if you
figure it this way, that you would have in
the State of Maryland at the next census
four million people, one senator would rep-
resent 100,000 people. I do not think that
you can organize the Senate or the House
on a county basis, in the light of one-man/
one-vote. The adoption of compulsory home
rule simply means that the legislators are
going to represent people. They are not
going to represent governmental units, and
the sooner we recognize that this is the
fact of life, I think the better off we will
be.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Byrnes.
DELEGATE BYRNES: Delegate James, |
