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| Michael and Ronald Reagan |
Michael Reagan comes out for a part-time Legislature
- Make the SOBs in Sacramento get a job in the real world.
- Full-time legislators have bankrupted the state. Let's try a part-time citizen legislature. They have to do better than the morons in charge now.
Assemblywoman Shannon Grove (R - Bakersfield) got the ball rolling with a statewide proposition to return the legislature to part-time status. She has now been joined in the effort by talk show host Michael Reagan, son of President Reagan. Over 800,000 signatures will be needed to get it on the ballot.
"To reverse its death spiral, California needs to return to a part-time legislature and turn its career politicians into part-time citizen politicians -- which is what they are in 41 other states and what they were in California until 1967," says Reagan.
Today the state's 120 legislators work year-round and their $95,000 salaries are sweetened by as much as $50,000 in tax-free per diem allowances. They are the highest-paid lawmakers in the country.
Compare California to Texas and Florida. In Texas they pay legislators $600 a month and the legislature meets 140 days a year. In Florida lawmakers get $30,000 a year and meet just 60 days.
The politicians in Texas and Florida do not make politics their careers. They have to have real jobs in the real world. When they're not in Austin or Tallahassee, they must live and do business under the same laws they have written.
- The act would return the state to a part-time legislature.
- Lawmaking sessions would be cut from 230 days to 90 days.
- Legislators would be forced to produce on-time, balanced budgets or not get paid. What a concept.
- The act also would end politics as a full-time career in California.
- Legislators would be paid $1,500 a month. At $18,000 a year, they'd have to find real jobs and see what it's like to live under the dumb and/or bad laws they write by the thousands in Sacramento.
(Citizen Legislature Now)
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