Most Washington voters support changing the state Constitution to allow for a year-round Legislature, NPI poll finds

A major­i­ty of like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton vot­ers agree that the state should change its Con­sti­tu­tion to allow the Leg­is­la­ture to be in ses­sion year-round, so it can con­sid­er leg­is­la­tion dur­ing every sea­son of the year, rather than just for 105 or 60 day stints in the win­ter and spring, a poll recent­ly con­duct­ed for NPI has found.

59% of 615 Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who intend to par­tic­i­pate in the com­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion this autumn expressed agree­ment with the idea of a year-round Leg­is­la­ture when Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling asked them about it for us last month. Only 18% were opposed. 22% said they were not sure. That’s a support/opposition ratio of more than 3 to 1!

A Leg­is­la­ture that met through­out the year would be able to take breaks for dis­trict work peri­ods, hol­i­days, and elec­tions, like Con­gress does, rather than try­ing to fever­ish­ly leg­is­late in the span of just three and a half months in an odd-num­bered year or two months in an even-num­bered year. Those lim­i­ta­tions on the length of reg­u­lar ses­sions are found in the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion, which cur­rent­ly reads:

ARTICLE II, SECTION 12. SESSIONS, WHEN — DURATION. (1) Reg­u­lar Ses­sions. A reg­u­lar ses­sion of the leg­is­la­ture shall be con­vened each year. Reg­u­lar ses­sions shall con­vene on such day and at such time as the leg­is­la­ture shall deter­mine by statute. Dur­ing each odd-num­bered year, the reg­u­lar ses­sion shall not be more than one hun­dred five con­sec­u­tive days. Dur­ing each even-num­bered year, the reg­u­lar ses­sion shall not be more than six­ty con­sec­u­tive days.

It might inter­est read­ers to know that we have already changed this part of the Con­sti­tu­tion. Here is the orig­i­nal text, dat­ing back to statehood: 

Orig­i­nal text — ARTICLE II, SECTION 12. SESSIONS, WHEN — DURATION — The first leg­is­la­ture shall meet on the first Wednes­day after the first Mon­day in Novem­ber, A. D., 1889. The sec­ond leg­is­la­ture shall meet on the first Wednes­day after the first Mon­day in Jan­u­ary, A. D., 1891, and ses­sions of the leg­is­la­ture shall be held bien­ni­al­ly there­after, unless spe­cial­ly con­vened by the gov­er­nor, but the times of meet­ing of sub­se­quent ses­sions may be changed by the leg­is­la­ture. After the first leg­is­la­ture the ses­sions shall not be more than six­ty days.

So, in the begin­ning, the Leg­is­la­ture was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly lim­it­ed to meet­ing every oth­er year, and for only six­ty days unless a spe­cial ses­sion was called. This lim­i­ta­tion exist­ed all the way through the 1970s, until Amend­ment 68 passed (specif­i­cal­ly, Sub­sti­tute Sen­ate Joint Res­o­lu­tion No. 110, p 2286, approved Novem­ber 6th, 1979, which replaced Sec­tion 12 with the lan­guage in the first excerpt above.) 

Amend­ment 68 pro­vid­ed that the Leg­is­la­ture would meet annu­al­ly rather than bien­ni­al­ly, and made odd-year ses­sions more than twice as long as even-year sessions.

That was a very con­struc­tive and nec­es­sary change. But it’s time we went fur­ther and got rid of the lim­its on how long reg­u­lar ses­sions can be alto­geth­er. Those lim­its just don’t serve a use­ful pur­pose. The real­i­ty is, we don’t have a part-time Leg­is­la­ture and haven’t for a long time. Rather, we have a full-time Leg­is­la­ture that is paid a part-time salary but is point­less­ly barred from meet­ing dur­ing most of the year. 

Any­one who lob­bies the Leg­is­la­ture for a liv­ing or does lots of activism at the state lev­el knows that there is no “off sea­son”. The time in between ses­sions is known as the inter­im, rather than the “off sea­son,” because it’s a time of prepa­ra­tion for the next ses­sion. Leg­is­la­tors raise mon­ey, run for reelec­tion, go to con­fer­ences, take con­stituent meet­ings, con­vene stake­hold­er groups, and draft legislation. 

And yes — many try to hold down oth­er jobs they have as well. 

But in prac­tice, our law­mak­ers are moon­light­ing as full time leg­is­la­tors because that’s what the job demands. The Nation­al Con­fer­ence of State Leg­is­la­tures, rec­og­niz­ing this, says leg­is­la­tures can’t be sim­ply clas­si­fied as mere­ly either part-time or full-time:

Being a leg­is­la­tor does­n’t just mean attend­ing leg­isla­tive ses­sions and vot­ing on pro­posed laws. State leg­is­la­tors also spend large amounts of time assist­ing con­stituents, study­ing state issues dur­ing the inter­im and cam­paign­ing for elec­tion. These activ­i­ties go on through­out the year. Any assess­ment of the time require­ments of the job should include all of these ele­ments of leg­isla­tive life.

Beyond that point, NCSL prefers to look more broad­ly at the capac­i­ty of leg­is­la­tures to func­tion as inde­pen­dent branch­es of gov­ern­ment, capa­ble of bal­anc­ing the pow­er of the exec­u­tive branch and hav­ing the infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to make inde­pen­dent, informed pol­i­cy deci­sions. To mea­sure the capac­i­ty of leg­is­la­tures, it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er the amount of time leg­is­la­tors spend on the job, the amount they are com­pen­sat­ed and the size of the leg­is­la­ture’s staff.

The NCSL has come up with five clas­si­fi­ca­tions of leg­is­la­tures:

• Full-time Lite (6)
• Part-time, low pay, small staff (4)
• Full-time, well paid, large staff (4)
• Part-time Lite (10)
• Hybrid

The five states of the greater Pacif­ic North­west fall into three dif­fer­ent categories.

Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon are hybrids. Mon­tana has a part-time, low pay, small staff leg­is­la­ture. Ida­ho has a part-time Lite leg­is­la­ture. Alas­ka has a Full-time Lite leg­is­la­ture; it is the only state in the greater region that allows its leg­is­la­tors to meet year-round.

At present, there are nine oth­er states with year-round, full-time leg­is­la­tures.

The five sim­i­lar to Alas­ka are Hawaii, Illi­nois, Wis­con­sin, Mass­a­chu­setts, and Ohio. 

Anoth­er four states — New York, Cal­i­for­nia, Michi­gan, and Penn­syl­va­nia — have what NCSL calls a Full-time, well paid, large staff legislature.

It would made sense for Wash­ing­ton to join them — and increase leg­is­la­tors’ pay, too. 

If we want excel­lent rep­re­sen­ta­tion in our state­house, we should pay our leg­is­la­tors more and change our plan of gov­ern­ment to allow them to meet year round. 

Con­strain­ing our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to delib­er­at­ing on bills in the span of a sin­gle sea­son is not good gov­er­nance. It neces­si­tates tools for clock man­age­ment such as cut-offs, which are rou­tine­ly used to mer­ci­less­ly bury promis­ing leg­is­la­tion that peo­ple have spent a lot of time on. And it regret­tably invites time-wast­ing mis­chief from the minor­i­ty par­ty, which knows it can force the major­i­ty to make hard choic­es about what to bring to the floor by propos­ing tons of amend­ments on select bills and hav­ing lots of mem­bers speak on those amend­ments and the under­ly­ing bill to drag out the debate. 

The Wash­ing­ton of 2024 is home to more than sev­en mil­lion peo­ple. It has a very large, diverse econ­o­my, with tech, agri­cul­ture, aero­space, and health among its best-known sec­tors. That econ­o­my needs a strong foun­da­tion of resilient pub­lic ser­vices to be suc­cess­ful in the future, and our pub­lic ser­vices in turn need a leg­isla­tive body they can depend on that isn’t hin­dered by anti­quat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­its on when it meets.

Draft­ing a ques­tion about mov­ing to a year-round Leg­is­la­ture was a mul­ti-stage exer­cise. The ques­tion went through sev­er­al iter­a­tions as we pon­dered the best way to explain the idea to our respon­dents they’d under­stand what we were ask­ing them to weigh in on. Ulti­mate­ly, we opt­ed to write a sim­ple ques­tion focus­ing on the basic facts, with­out bring­ing up oth­er states, or our con­sti­tu­tion­al his­to­ry, or oth­er con­text I’ve just pro­vid­ed. We like to let peo­ple bring their own opin­ions to the respons­es — as I often say here, you can’t find out what peo­ple think if you tell them what to think first! 

Here’s the text of our ques­tion and the responses:

QUESTION: Washington’s cur­rent plan of gov­ern­ment lim­its reg­u­lar ses­sions of the Leg­is­la­ture to 105 days in odd-num­bered years and 60 days in even-num­bered years, which means state law­mak­ers can only con­sid­er bills from Jan­u­ary until either March or April. Do you strong­ly agree, some­what agree, some­what dis­agree, or strong­ly dis­agree that Wash­ing­ton should amend its state Con­sti­tu­tion to allow the Leg­is­la­ture to be in ses­sion year-round?

RESPONSES:

• Agree: 59%
  • Strong­ly agree: 37%
  • Some­what agree: 22%
• Dis­agree: 18% 
  • Some­what dis­agree: 8%
  • Strong­ly dis­agree: 10%
• Not sure: 22% 

Our sur­vey of 615 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, May 15th until Thurs­day, May 16th, 2024.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (45%) and online answers from respon­dents recruit­ed by text (55%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 4.0% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

Chang­ing the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion is a two-step process. 

Unlike in Ore­gon and oth­er states, con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments can’t orig­i­nate from a peti­tion. They must come from the Leg­is­la­ture, and they must receive a two-thirds affir­ma­tive vote in each cham­ber to pass. Then they go to the peo­ple. If a major­i­ty of the peo­ple approve, the amend­ment is rat­i­fied and becomes part of the Constitution.

Pass­ing a joint res­o­lu­tion to change the Con­sti­tu­tion has tra­di­tion­al­ly required bipar­ti­san sup­port. Democ­rats would need to pick up a net of eight House seats and four Sen­ate seats this year to be able to refer any con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments to the peo­ple in 2025 or 2026 with­out any Repub­li­can help. And every sin­gle one of those Democ­rats would then have to be on board if Repub­li­cans were in opposition.

This is an idea that ought to be able to get bipar­ti­san sup­port, though. There are many upsides for Repub­li­cans to con­sid­er. One of those is that there would be more time avail­able for their bills and amend­ments to get considered. 

We can at least say that the final step, rat­i­fi­ca­tion, does­n’t look like it would be a hur­dle. I’ve heard doubt voiced that vot­ers would ever approve a shift to a year-round Leg­is­la­ture, but our polling indi­cates that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans are very much in favor of mak­ing this long over­due change. The dis­par­i­ty in the inten­si­ty of sup­port is notable. Close to two out of five is very enthu­si­as­tic, and only out out of ten are adamant­ly opposed. 

This is a real­ly encour­ag­ing find­ing. We hope our leg­is­la­tors and leg­isla­tive can­di­dates will take note of it. The time seems ripe to launch an effort to secure a year-round Leg­is­la­ture. It might take a mul­ti-year effort to get it to the bal­lot, but that’s all the more rea­son to start now, so that we can get clos­er to a bet­ter future faster.