On a rainy April morning, Ed Orcutt was tramping through the woods, looking for trees to measure.
Orcutt is a Republican state representative, serving Centralia and Chehalis. But when the Legislature adjourns, you can find him surveying trees for his day job as a forester.
In his bright yellow rain gear and hard hat, he looks quite different from just a few weeks ago, when he wore a suit on the floor of the House. But he prefers it this way.
“I think the fact that we come and we do the legislative session, we get done, we go back into our communities, we go back to our homes, we go back to our jobs, that's what keeps us grounded and helps us remember why we're there in the first place,” he said.
At this point in the year, most of Washington’s lawmakers have returned to their day jobs. The state has a part-time Legislature, meaning that for the majority of the year, senators and representatives aren’t in Olympia — they’re back in their home districts, working their main gigs.
This system is referred to as a “citizen legislature,” and the state’s founders felt they wanted to encourage regular people to be part of the lawmaking process.
“I think once you become full time, you're no longer a forester, you're no longer a farmer, you're no longer a nurse, you're no longer a teacher,” said Orcutt.
Most states in the country have a part-time legislature, though 10 states meet full time, including California, New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. In these states, lawmakers are paid a livable wage without needing to work another job, and they work at least 80% of a full-time schedule.
Washington has a hybrid schedule. Before 1979, its legislature met once every other year, for just 60 days at a time. After a constitutional amendment, lawmakers now meet for 105 days on odd-numbered years and 60 days on even-numbered years. The governor has had the power to call in “special” sessions, which can extend the session length, but they don’t happen every year.
Some experts — and lawmakers themselves — think the state’s problems are starting to outgrow this limited schedule and that it’s time for a change.
Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University, is one of those critics. Donovan said on the one hand, a part-time legislature like Washington’s, which pays lawmakers only about $67,000 a year, could encourage people to maintain other jobs — and lead to more turnover.
“If you want expertise and you want people sticking around and you want them having the capacity to govern, you'd maybe want a higher salary, longer sessions, more staff for your legislators,” Donovan said. “If you have this sort of ideal that you want frequent turnover in office and new people, then having a churn of people being able to serve in office, then maybe you don't want it to be such a high-paid position.”
But it seems that sentiment may be shifting. Just this year, a resolution was put forward that would give Washington lawmakers the ability to set their own calendar without having to amend the constitution. This would allow for the Legislature to hold longer sessions if it deems it appropriate; right now, it is bound by the state constitution to end after a set number of days.
“It's quaint to think that you have a part-time legislature,” said Andrew Villeneuve, founder of progressive think tank Northwest Progressive Institute. His organization helped bring the resolution forward. “Legislators are constantly being asked to go to things during the interim, and so they don't really get a break from legislating.”
Especially after this year’s 60-day sprint of a session, which included closing a budget deficit and passing a historic tax on high earners after a nearly 25-hour-long floor debate, Villeneuve thinks it’s time for a change.
“Last year I heard, ‘This was the most brutal session ever,’ and this year, I heard that again,” Villeneuve said. “Every session is going to be the most brutal session ever. And that's really going to wear people down and make them think, ‘Gosh, why are we doing this to ourselves? There's got to be a better way.’”
Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins admitted that she’s always been on the fence about whether Washington’s Legislature should be full or part time. But recently, she’s begun to give the idea of a full-time legislature more thought.
“One of the things I would say I think has changed since I was elected in 2011 is the complexity of how we're governing the issues that we're addressing,” Jinkins said.
She added that it feels like there is extra urgency now, with a federal administration that she sees as antagonistic towards Washington’s government.
“Having a federal government that's doing big things to Washingtonians, like right now … that leaves a lot of months where the federal government is churning out things and we're not back in Olympia able to do things in response to help Washingtonians,” Jinkins said.
Last year, Sen. Bob Hasegawa (D-Tukwila) put forward a bill that would have studied how Washington could transition to a full-time legislature. Before serving in the Legislature, Hasegawa worked as a commercial truck driver. But after his first few years in office, he chose to retire.
“After the first year or two of doing that work, it became clear that work was not compatible with my legislative job,” Hasegawa said.
He said the demands of the Legislature make it hard to get a diversity of people whose day jobs are flexible enough that they can take a leave of absence for three months.
“You pretty much have to take a vow of poverty to do this job, unless you are independently wealthy or carried by some corporation that's willing to give you as much time off as you need,” Hasegawa said.
But Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Aberdeen), who has served in the Legislature for 10 years, said he thinks the issues Hasegawa surfaces are part of what Washington’s constitution writers intended. They didn’t want career politicians holding office.
“You're supposed to do this job for a while, I don't know, maybe 10 years or something like that. Get good at it. Try to make good policy, but then you're supposed to go do something else,” Walsh said. “If we were to increase the compensation to make it a more attractive job, you'd have people doing it for their whole career. And I'm not sure that's what the founders of our state had in mind.”
Hasegawa’s bill ultimately didn’t go anywhere, but he thinks the issue will resurface again soon enough — if there’s enough time next session.
