A front-page article in this newspaper Sunday accelerated my contemplation of a radical plan for legislative reform in Arkansas.
It propounds that stringent term limits provide insufficient constraints on the insular band of back-scratching money-changers with whom we are now infested in the Arkansas General Assembly.
After criminal convictions of legislators for taking capital-improvement money unto themselves in laundering schemes, and after indictments and convictions of legislators for converting campaign contributions to personal luxuries, and after reports of lawyer-legislators getting retainers through lobbyists for legal work not performed, this latest article put a little dab of icing on the odorous cake.
Former House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, a perfectly fine fellow in my experience, was apparently in some financial trouble at his family berry farm. He needed a little loan.
State Rep. Joe Jett, at the time a Democrat chairing the Revenue and Tax Committee by Gillam's bipartisanship, lent Gillam $16,000. Probably coincidentally, Jett soon switched to the Republican Party and Gillam, as the speaker, reappointed him chairman of Revenue and Tax.
Jett went on social media early Sunday to say he was saddened by such journalistic cynicism that would question his obligation to a friend.
I'm saddened by something different--by legislators who don't take pains to avoid even appearances of inappropriateness.
It's not that Jett can't be Gillam's friend. It's that you don't hand the speaker of the House $16,000. It looks bad for what ought to be a public-service institution, not a self-service institution.
You don't want to leave even an appearance that the speaker is selling favors or that a legislator is buying a reappointment to run the committee setting policy for all our taxes.
A legislator is supposed to report all debts exceeding $5,000, according to the state Ethics Commission. But Gillam didn't report this one until the newspaper reporter learned of it. So, alas, there's the appearance of hiding.
The former speaker, now cashed-in as a UCA vice president, explained that he deemed the money a farm-to-farm transaction, since Jett is a farmer also.
Gillam told this paper he intends to pay the loan back soon with some unspecified additional amount serving as voluntary interest.
Even among close friends, an advance of money implies obligation. And a loan without terms is--or at least contains--a gift.
So, I've long had in mind a plan--well, a pleasant pipe dream--that I'd like to air publicly only for whatever point-making value it might offer.
Its point is that legislating ought to be service, not fraternity.
Maybe we need to make legislative service like jury duty.
For each biennial regular session, and for any special sessions the governor might call, we'd draw, oh, a thousand names for House membership and 300 for Senate membership. All those folks whose names were drawn would get notices to report to Little Rock on the date invoked.
A total of 135 names would be secondarily drawn from the thousand for House membership. A total of 35 names would be secondarily drawn from the 300 for Senate membership.
Those persons whose names were drawn would take seats in the respective chambers to be questioned in the process called voir dire. That's when the competing lawyers in a jury trial screen jurors and exercise "strikes" of persons they either don't like or deem problematic for their side. For each "strike," some other name would be drawn.
I'm not yet clear who'd conduct the legislative voir dire, because the executive and judicial branches are co-equal and can't presume to dictate membership of the third branch.
Maybe we could deploy officials of the two parties, maybe with the majority party--as determined by the constitutional office-holdings--getting more pre-emptive strikes.
Republicans would want to strike any Medicaid recipients, for example.
A jury of one's peers is how we handle something as precious as justice. We call it the best system in the world. Something like that ought to work for considering laws, a process we're currently enduring in Arkansas that no one could remotely call the best in the world.
I'd even suggest we consider sequestering legislators during a session and forbidding lobbyists from chatting them up in the same way we forbid lawyers from walking over mid-trial and chatting up jurors.
Lobbyists could testify publicly at hearings like everyone else, for they're no different from anyone else.
There'd be no interim legislators--no committees, no task forces, no studies, no per diems, no mileage, no more hanging out in Little Rock to get away from home.
Is that constitutional? Well, sure, since doing it would require a constitutional amendment, which, if passed, would be inherently constitutional. We've put more inane and less noble amendments in our state Constitution.
Anyway, current constitutional law authorizes a legislature only to make laws, not to run around the Capitol between sessions soiling the marble.
Think what the secretary of state could save between legislative sessions on air freshener alone.
------------v------------
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 09/25/2018