Considering elective surgery and the body politic

One of the more endearing quirks of the Internet is its habit when performing searches of returning the occasional oddball result that isn’t even close to the subject of inquiry. No matter how well you define your request for information on, say, global climate change, the imp inside your computer invariably assumes you’ll also want to know about the history of the harpsichord.

An example. The other day, I thought it might be interesting, now that the elections are over (at least in the 49 locations that know how to run elections) to see what’s up in the nation’s state legislatures. With new sessions about to begin, what would be the dominant issues, the common concerns, the overarching themes, that sort of thing.

The search engine of choice, one that scans hundreds of newspapers and magazines, returned thousands of results, most right on target. Congressional redistricting is a huge deal in those states gaining or losing seats. Education, taxation and health care are staples of agendas everywhere. Clearly, a significant shift in power between the two major parties is not a story unique to Maine.

But the theme that overarches is this – for the first time in years, state legislatures will convene without benefit of enormous revenue surpluses that piled up during the off season. The cushion, from hundreds of millions to billions, that made decisions about tax cuts and new spending so easy is gone. States that prudently used their surpluses to prepare for the future will find their ant-like behavior rewarded. States that played the grasshopper will be sorry. All states now have no choice but to focus upon the fundamental functions of government.

And there, wedged between two such stories – one about austerity in Ohio and the other about belt-tightening in Georgia – was the oddball. Voters in Gorakhpur, India, just elected a eunuch as mayor.

It seems this form of anatomical self-pruning is not unusual among Northern Indian males of the lower social classes. It is both a long-standing protest against economic injustice and a lifestyle choice that apparently creates employment opportunities in India’s entertainment industry – according to the story, neutered singers and dancers are in great demand for weddings and christenings. In this particular case, mayor-elect Asha Devi used the alteration to convince voters that nothing would distract “him” from advancing the cause of the downtrodden and oppressed.

An interesting story with a very high wince factor, but the question I have for the imp is this: What is this compelling dispatch from the Agence French Presse doing amid the nuts-and-bolts reporting of the Akron Beacon Journal and the Atlanta Constitution? I asked for stories about state legislatures in the United States of America and got one about elective surgery in India.

A glitch? Perhaps. Or perhaps, and this is just a hunch, that imp is sending a not-too-subtle message to American lawmakers – whether it’s taxes or programs, no cuts being contemplated from Augusta to Honolulu are anywhere nearly as painful as what’s going down in Gorakhpur.

Curious about what is going down in Augusta, I called Maine Revisor of Statutes Meg Matheson. It is her office, with a staff of 34 lawyers, clerks, paralegals, writers and proofreaders, that turns the whims, notions and ideas (half or fully baked) of Maine lawmakers into actual bills, resolves, orders and amendments. In particular, I was curious about where the upcoming session stands in regard to the fundamentals/focus combo.

You know what it’s like in a Maine supermarket the day before a big winter storm hits? How, despite the prospect of hideous weather and the reality of checkout lines that reach back to the frozen-food section, people are uncommonly gleeful? How the distinct impression a stranger would get is that Mainers enjoy nothing as much as a good power outage and that the mere thought of shivering in the dark sets off a veritable festival of bottled water and flashlight battery buying?

Talking to Ms. Matheson, I got that same impression of good cheer in the face of an impending pain in the neck. Although bill requests from lawmakers, newly elected and returning, are just starting to trickle in and the filing deadline, though subject to change, still is about three weeks away, she laughingly suspects that the incoming 120th Legislature will surpass the record-breaking 119th in the annals of bill submission.

Happily, the revisor’s office is ready. A project, begun by Ms. Matheson’s predecessor a decade ago, when she was the office’s principal attorney, to put Maine laws into English as plain and straightforward as possible is paying off – compare recent Maine statutes with statutes of earlier years or other states and the difference is striking. The office’s Web site and the easy access it provides the public to laws already on the books and those in the works is truly a model among the states. A new e-mail form for legislators to submit bill-drafting requests at least requires some thought be given to whether the law being proposed is needed. There is, overall and unmistakably, a high regard for representative democracy.

Unhappily, the record set by the 119th does not need breaking. The number of bills – nearly 2,700 – stuffed in the hopper by the last legislature was excessive even at a time when Maine could afford to indulge itself. At the time, it seemed downright luxurious to think that Maine had the time and the money to designate an official state amphibian, to create ever more specific commemorative license plates and special hunting and fishing licenses for ever more special groups of people, to hand out tax breaks to tourists and to give money to businesses that lay people off. Now, the party’s over and Maine still has yet to meet its 15-year promise on school funding, it still is at the bottom in such economy-building fundamentals as R&D investment and college education. And, overall, it wasn’t really all that great of a party anyway.

Not to dampen the enthusiasm of the incoming Legislature, but it would be good to follow the example of other states and recognize that, along with the fiscal prudence the times require, time itself is valuable and should be not squandered on narrow little bills written for narrow groups of people. Certainly it is hard for citizen legislators to say no to the friends and neighbors that make up a constituency, but it’s nothing compared to the sacrifice made by Mayor Devi.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.