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Klau.
Connecticut needs full-time legislators, but it doesn’t need two houses of them, in the view of a prominent attorney who’s seeking to form an unconventional constitutional convention to get a conversation going on the topic.
Dan Klau, a leading First Amendment and open government lawyer, is taking a lead role in trying to organize the “We, The People” convention to revisit the basics of how government operates.
To achieve changes in how state government operates requires a constitutional convention. That isn’t easy: Voters have to approve the calling of a convention; in 1986 and in 2008, the voters said no in part because they were pressured by the establishment to keep the status quo, Klau argued during an interview on WNHH radio’s “Legal Eagle” program. Connecticut last had a constitutional convention in 1965 when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state to redraw Congressional districts, he noted.
The convention Klau is proposing wouldn’t have the same binding authority. Conventioneers “would debate the issues and come up with recommendations. Through an informal referendum, we would use the recommendations to get legislators to look at them.”
He argued that a people’s convention could produce recommendations the state’s legislators would have to listen to. “It would be like Brexit. The referendum on that vote is not a legally binding vote on Parliament. Yet because so many people came out to vote it is virtually impossible for Parliament to ignore the vote.”
One House? Or 2
Currently the Connecticut legislature is bicameral, meaning it has a House of Representatives and a Senate.
“Do we need two houses?” Klau asked. “Do you need that at a state level as opposed to at the federal level where federal issues are involved?”
And how long should legislators serve? George Lackman “Doc” Gunther from Shelton served as a state senator from Shelton for 40 years. State Sen. Martin Looney (D‑New Haven) has been a state senator for 23 years, serving since 1993. He is currently President Pro Tempore of the Senate.
Connecticut has no term limits. Should it? Klau wants his convention to tackle that issue, too.
Should legislators be ineligible for reelection if a state’s budget increases by more than a certain amount, say 3 percent, each year? That’s another idea he posed, one first raised, he said, by Warren Buffett. “The idea is that no member of the general assembly should run for reelection if the budget rises beyond a certain percentage. Understanding that, you want to create something in the broader public interest.”
Organizing a Convention
Klau said he would speak to good government groups like the League of Women Voters to organize a group of citizens who would debate and “vote” on the issues.
A group of 40 to 50 citizens of voting age committed to the convention process would be selected at random from across the state. They would serve as delegates and meet periodically over several months to review the Connecticut Constitution. They would propose and debate amendments, which would then be submitted to voters through a referendum.
Click on the above sound file to hear the entire interview on WNHH radio’s “Legal Eagle” program.
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I understand the desire for term limits - I was on the non-partisan staff of the CT legislature for 30 years. But while most legislators are intelligent and conscientious, it takes them a term or two to figure out how the legislature works. Term limits increase the power of lobbyists and staffers. While both groups are largely composed of decent people, no one elected them.