Jeff Jacoby’s commentary, “Short Live the Legislature”, in The Boston Globe is a mix of flawed assumptions and hazardous conclusions about state legislatures. He perpetuates a harmful myth about the superiority of citizen legislators. Does anyone want a part-time surgeon repairing one’s heart? Or someone without legal training defending you in court? Making policy in a modern society is complex. It requires full-time attention, particularly in a state like Massachusetts where citizens have high expectations. To be sure, we could turn over these tasks to unelected experts. But John Adams drafted the Massachusetts Constitution to give strong powers to a legislature precisely because his generation believed in representative democracy.
Jacoby thinks one problem with legislatures is that they meet all year round. He heralds Texas as a model because the part-time legislature’s ability to “do damage is checked by a system that deliberately keeps lawmakers from having too much power.” Who makes decisions when the legislature is out of town? Governors, bureaucrats and lobbyists, not necessarily in that order. He approvingly quotes Governor Wolcott (1897) — a wealthy Mayflower Yankee with Harvard pedigree — who asks the legislature to stop sending him so much legislation. The plea sounds self-serving from an executive who would rather not be challenged by a legislative branch representing a broader group of citizens, including the much-maligned Irish-Americans.
In Jacoby’s mythic world, we should not pay legislators much. He calls $62,548 “extravagant” (MA median income is $75,297) and favors the New Hampshire model of $100 salary. Consider this job advertisement. Wanted: someone willing to have terrible work-life balance, be criticized publicly for mistakes, and be thwarted daily in getting things done by 159 rivals with equal or greater power. Research shows we would get more qualified people if we paid them more. Additionally, our statehouses would attract a more representative group of people, including those who would not have to worry about having a second job or losing the one they currently have.
Legislatures are the keystone of American democracy. We should want our best and brightest. To be sure, hold them accountable at elections, and encourage the media to criticize them when warranted (as in failing to meet budget deadlines). But please hold the contempt. As a journalist whose profession is under attack at the highest level of government, Jacoby might pause before taking a populist hammer to democratic institutions.