Wednesday, December 13th, 2006...5:06 pm
Department of Corrections Department
A regular reader took issue with some of my points in my post regarding the organization of the House in the upcoming session.
First, I didn’t make it clear enough that the issue about the third floor offices was a rumor that I had heard. As it turns out, what has actually happened is that despite their being six more Democrats than there were last session, there will only be one new office space opened for them on the third floor. As I said in my post, this is a minor, cosmetic action at best, but symbolic nonetheless.
Second, the writer took issue with my characterization of last sessions committes as 5-3. I was mistaken on that. Only one committee was 5-3, the remaining committees were 6-3 or 4-2. The mistake obviously took attention away from my main point: the ratio on the committees should reflect the make-up of the House. The House’s 33-27 membership is a heck of a lot better reflected by a 5-4 committee ratio than a 5-3 ratio. I know ‘cos I checked it on my slide rule. Interestingly, the 6-3 and 4-2 ratios reflected the 39-21 ratio of the last House fairly accurately. I don’t doubt for a minute that when committee memberships were set at the beginning of the last session, they gave that as a justification for the seemingly lopsided committees.
The Republicans have been giving some justifications for this. The last time the Democrats had control of the legislature, Senate President Pete Rios set similar committee ratios in that body. It was controversial at the time, but I can’t think of a Republican member that was around at the time to have felt aggrieved. Heck, some of them weren’t even living in the state at the time.
They also are trying to justify it by saying that in an early 1990’s legislature when Republicans and Democrats had the exact same 33-27 partisan breakdown, the committees were 5-3 as well.
At least in the case of that 1991-93 Senate, the Republicans can argue that the Democrats were unfair to them, so they can say “sauce for the goose” or whatever. However, the second argument basically says, we were unfair to you before, so it is okay to be unfair to you again. Doesn’t exactly engender a lot of sympathy.
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