Greenberg: No to Annual Legislative Sessions

Dan Greenberg: Thumbs down on annual sessions

Arkansas Project contributor Dan Greenberg (he’s the second most popular of our stable of regular contributors) is apparently saving his “A” material for more esteemed publications, as he takes to the pages of today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to argue against Proposed Constitutional Amendment 2.

Amendment 2, you may be aware, is on the ballot to allow the state legislature to meet annually, instead of the current biennial sessions. Greenberg argues, in essence, that the road to hell is paved with annual sessions:

Annual sessions will also lead to big government in Arkansas. Political scientists have demonstrated what everybody knows: the longer legislatures are in session, the more legislation they produce—which generally leads to bigger, more expensive and more complex government. States with full-time legislatures generally rank near the top of the list of biggest per-person taxers and spenders. In contrast, our neighborhood state of Texas—which, like Arkansas, has a legislature that only meets every other year—is consistently near the bottom of the list when ranked by per-person taxing and spending.

Rep. Eric Harris (R) provides a countervailing perspective in the same pages.

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