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A part-time Legislature is overdue in California

Published: Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012 - 12:02 pm
Last Modified: Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012 - 2:26 pm

Re "Special interests target of part-time proposal" (Capitol & California, Feb. 22): The article is accurate as those interests, not us, own most of our legislators. Making California's legislators part-time is long overdue.

Term limits, passed in 1990, shortened their terms, but the jobs remain full-time. Only four states still have full-time Legislatures. Our legislators, the highest paid in the U.S., only passed four budgets on time in the last 30 years.

The present initiative to make our legislators part-time uses the Texas Legislature as a model. It meets every other year for 120 days to cover business for two years, and then they go back home to their jobs. And Texas is much better off than California.

Former Governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed the Legislature should be part-time. So do I. It's time to do so.

-- Joe Sullivan, past president, Sacramento County Taxpayers League, Sacramento

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