Plans offered to trim Legislature

AUGUSTA – Does size really matter at the State House?

At least two lawmakers from completely opposite ends of the political spectrum agreed that it did Wednesday and offered differing plans for reducing the number of legislators in Augusta.

Rep. Henry Joy, a conservative Republican from the Aroostook County town of Crystal wants a smaller state Senate with half the districts. Rep. Sean Faircloth, a progressive Bangor Democrat, wants to slash the House by a third and cut two seats from the Senate.

Both lawmakers took their concerns to the Legislature’s State and Local Government Committee which spent a good part of the afternoon weighing the merits of the proposals during sparsely attended public hearings. The panel has scheduled a work session on both measures for March 16.

Joy’s LD 440 is a resolution amending the Maine Constitution to decrease the number of state senators from 35 to 32. More important than the three-seat reduction is the way Joy would apportion the state Senate seats. Rather than based on population, as is currently the case, Joy would have the voters elect two state senators from each of Maine’s 16 counties – a design that more closely reflects the national government model.

“Under the present situation, we have in essence, a unicameral Legislature with two houses since both are elected on the basis of population,” Joy said. “Changing to two senators per county would place us on the same basis as our nation with the House being the body of the people and the Senate being the body of the land, or geography.”

Joy, who has thoughtfully constructed a reputation at the State House for crafting provocative government bills, sees more to his proposal than creating a better balance between the House and Senate. A champion of rural cultural preservation, he realizes the vast majority of Maine’s counties can be described as moderately to completely rural. Maine continues to grow disproportionately with many of the residents in the northern and eastern regions of the state relocating to the more densely populated southern counties.

Well aware that “all politics is local,” Joy said his new Senate would have a decidedly rural lean, a development that can’t come soon enough for the reigning dean of the House GOP caucus.

“To continue as we are, foretells the death of Maine as we know it and destruction of any growth in economic opportunities in rural Maine,” Joy said. “Many other states with similar lopsided population structures face the same imbalance as does Maine and their rural citizens are facing the same destruction of their way of life.”

Joy, who plans to submit legislation calling for a study to explore the idea of dividing Maine into two states, said that proposal would be unnecessary if LD 440 were enacted.

Rep. Faircloth offered two companion pieces of legislation: LD 461, a constitutional amendment that would reduce the Senate to 33 seats and the House from 151 districts down to 99, and LD 455, a bill that would direct savings derived from shrinking the Legislature toward better salaries for lawmakers and computerize the lawmakers’ desks in the House and Senate to eliminate the need for paper bills and amendments.

The Bangor lawmaker said his two bills would create a “paperless Legislature,” encourage more working-class Mainers to run for legislative office, reduce the costs of government and create a legislative process that would be more readily understandable by Maine citizens.

Observing Maine has more legislators per capita than most states – other than New Hampshire – Faircloth said the average House district in the United States has about 50,000 people as compared to about 9,000 in Maine. Faircloth said his bill would increase that current apportionment to a little more than 12,000 constituents.

“It’s an increase, but I don’t think it’s one that is debilitating to your constituents,” Faircloth told the committee members.

Rep. James M. Schatz, D-Blue Hill and a member of the state and local government committee, asked Faircloth how term limits would affect his proposal. Faircloth said he continued to oppose term limits in general, but would be open to at least one amendment to increase the terms of office for the smaller Legislature from two years to four. Under such a revision, a lawmaker could then remain on the job for 16 consecutive years instead of eight.

“I don’t know how I see these two [topics] interacting,” Faircloth said. “I wish we could get to a point where we remove term limits.”

Faircloth said the largest single obstacle to either constitutional amendment would be the two-thirds vote requirement for enactment in the House and Senate.