You know by now Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is gone. One point in the bio of his successor, Gov. Pat Quinn, raises a possible reform in Kentucky worth discussing:
"He led a successful effort to pass the "cutback amendment" -- a change in the Illinois Constitution that cut the size of the House from 177 members to 118."
My thought is that Kentucky might do well to consider doing the opposite and actually raise the amount of Kentucky legislators from the current 38 Senators and 100 Representatives.
In 1891, when the current numbers were set, there were about 2 million Kentuckians. Our population has doubled since then to more than 4 million. Seems like we have vested roughly double the power in each member of General Assembly than was originally intended.
How do you think that is working out?
Working out the logistics of dealing with 200 Representatives and 76 Senators would, of course, be the hard part at the state level. But improving government accountability locally is something worth investing some thought time in.
1 comment:
Actually, I disagree with you and I'd like to see our system of how representatives are chosen changed.
I'd up the number of representatives from 1 to 120, and let each county have one representative regardless of size or population. This would be similar to the way the U.S. Senate is set up, where each state gets the same number of senators regardless of how many people live there or how big the state is. Then I would keep the 38 senators, or perhaps lower the number to 30, and divide those districts by population. Having a legislature where both chambers are determined by population always seemed to me to be unfair to the smaller, rural areas. I like the way the feds set it up, in one chamber all states are equal and in the other the larger states have more votes. No reason Kentucky couldn't do the same with its counties.
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