Once bills in the legislature get so large and complicated that citizens are unable to follow them, we can no longer truly stay involved in the legislative process. It’s nearly impossible to follow these bills without paid staff; thus, ordinary citizens need to rely on special interest groups to stay informed towards the end of the legislative session.
Many Minnesotans praise our system of part-time citizen legislators, but I would gladly trade our system for one in which the combination of bills into large omnibus bills is prohibited, even if the legislators needed to work for most of the year.
Omnibus bills are a nuisance, to be sure. What would be more of a nuisance would be to have 201 professional legislators loitering at the corner of University Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive year-round. Or close to it.
The first thing that would happen is a bipartisan effort to raise their salaries. They already have the benefits, so that is moot. Then, for good measure, we can all reap the benefits of paying additional per diem costs.
Let’s try this instead: in budget years like this one, the session starts in January under the premise that they have additional work to do. The reality is the budget stuff waits and waits and waits until they go home for Passover/Easter and get an earful from their constituents telling them to get the job done. They scurry back to St. Paul and what we are all seeing right now (again) is what we get.
The trains are on the tracks. The turbines are wound up. The wreck is coming. Personally, I will be shocked if the State of Minnesota has a budget that has been passed and signed into law by TP by Memorial Day. I’m guessing it’s 3:2 in favor of a shutdown on July 1. Again.
Omnibus bills bug you? Jesus man no government representative at any level reads or knows what is in 99% of the crap they vote for. They calculate if the bill will play well in their given district. Then leadership determines how many people can vote against the party line and still pass the bill so they can allow those that need to to vote according to their districts.
Only a meaningless fraction of the population has any idea what happens at government at any level. Even if you wanted to, omnibus bills aside, there is no way humanly possible for anybody to track the various actions in government that effect their lives. Even if they did so as a full time job. People vote based on the BS marketing, not reality, and that’s the way the parties like it.
Imagine having huge legislative majorities that has to put together a comprehensive legislative budget and then passing each bill that has a fiscal impact individually to a governor of the opposite party (who might by chance have ambitions that require him to suck up to a bunch of donors and activists who don’t care at all Minnesota). Then imagine this governor vetoes every bill that doesn’t meet the litmus test of the people he is trying to impress. Giving up the omnibus bill process only gives the executive branch more power than it already has. Regardless of who is in power I’m not convinced that is the best result for Minnesota or democracy.
That is one of the most common-sense posts I’ve ever read on this blog!! Hey, St. Paul: CHANGE THE RULES!
Yeah, let’s pay them more to work all year, then they can really legislate us out of existence.