The Wrong Way to Shrink State Govt

In a quest to save money some states are looking at downsizing their legislatures. But the moves will be bad for governance and save little money.

In a quest to save money and improve governance, at least three states—Maine, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky—have given serious consideration to proposals that would consolidate their legislatures into one chamber. The plans to create unicameral legislatures end up promising more than they deliver and aren’t good ideas anyway.

Let’s begin with the proponents’ arguments.  Unilateralism’s proponents point out that state upper and lower houses don’t necessarily form distinct functions. The lack of distinction exists because, in a series of reapportionment cases between the early 1960s and late 1980s the Supreme Court declared that all legislative bodies except the U.S. Senate had to be allocated strictly on the basis of population.  (Before then, states allocated upper house seats by region without regard to population.) Since both houses in all states get allocated on the basis of the same way, proponents of unicameralism argue, the two-house structure simply wastes resources. Maine has estimated that eliminating a house of its legislature would save about $15 million while Pennsylvania (which has a full time legislature) puts the savings at $90 million. These same proponents also say that a one-house legislature will be more “streamlined” and improve the quality of government. They also point out that Nebraska’s state legislature, nearly all U.S. governments below the state level, most national legislatures, and regional legislatures in most other countries are unicameral.

None of these arguments proves convincing. First, the state upper and lower houses have actually remained pretty distinct.  State senators typically get higher pay than their colleagues in lower houses, represent larger districts (California’s senate districts are bigger than U.S. House districts) and have longer terms. Many are “graduates” of lower houses.  As a result, upper houses of state legislatures tend to be more collegial and deliberative.  Like the U.S. Senate, the serve as “cooling saucers” for the populism of lower houses. Second, the savings hardly seem big enough to justify a fundamental change in the structure of government. The $15 million that Maine would save by eliminating 35 senators is less than the $18 million the same state’s Department of Agriculture spends on its computer systems. People who actually want to save money for government can save just as much without the expensive, difficult process of amending state constitutions. Finally, although it may be able to pass legislation slightly more quickly, there’s no real evidence that a one house legislature leads to better government. Nebraska gets middling grades for government quality (in the same neighborhood as its border states) on the Governing Magazine and Pew Center government quality report cards. In short, the advantages of unicameral legislatures seem awfully small.

On the other hand, the way unicameral legislatures would change the fundamental structure of American governance appear quite significant.  First, particularly if its members served terms shorter than the governor’s, a single house legislature could easily be turned into a rubber stamp for a popular governor’s policies and programs. A two house legislature is difficult—perhaps impossible—for an executive to capture entirely. Second, the elimination of a legislative chamber would leave many more people without a local legislator that shares their views: with at least two members of the state legislator representing every American, Democrats represented by Republican lower house members can often turn to Democratic Senators to have their views represented. The elimination of a legislative chamber would make this impossible and leave many people feeling unrepresented.  Finally, a two chamber house can simply do more than a single chamber. Most of the world’s unicameral legislatures exist to say “yes” or “no” to executive proposals, oversee certain aspects of the executive’s performance and, perhaps, force new elections. But they can rarely force the executive to do things it doesn’t want to do anyway, perform probing investigations into executive branch doings, or even propose legislation on their own. U.S. legislatures can do all of these things and two chamber legislatures give executive branches two different, complimentary overseers and co-governors.  More legislators are simply better than fewer.

Quite simply, single house legislatures save little money and do nothing to streamline governance but do undermine many fundamentals of state governance. They aren’t a good idea.