We are already hearing announcements by persons of their plans to run for elective office, especially the Montana Legislature and, more specifically, the House of Representative. I think this may be getting the cart in front of the horse. Given the deteriorating performance and behavior in the Montana Legislature, particularly the House of Representatives, we should be considering how to correct the performance of our legislature I further believe that now is the time to develop a bipartisan plan to accomplish that task. However, we do need to examine how the Montana Legislature has fallen to their current low performance level.

I think our longest serving Speaker of the House must accept some responsibility for setting a trend to the degenerative process that took it on a new low in the 2007 session. That Speaker took partisanship to a new low in his eight years in office, and his Republican successors apparently "learned" that was the way things were supposed to run in the House of Representatives. That extreme partisanship was responded in kind, of course, by a bunch of angry Democrats. Many of these "newly educated" Republicans are now members of the Senate, although somewhat tempered by traditions of the Senate.

I think extreme partisanship took place in the House because existing rules allowed it to happen.

For example, the Speaker makes appointments of all committee members, while the Senate has a Committee on Committees to do that, but the Senate majority party has total control of that committee's membership. The House rule is clearly an abomination, and the Senate is not much better. I believe each party should make such appointments, and they should be able to decide in caucus how they will do that, not necessarily the same procedure for both parties.

Another source of concern to me is that the President of the Senate and Speaker of the House both tend to ignore the phrases "of the Senate" and "of the House," I take them very literally, and remember the Speaker of the House when I took my seat, Dan Kemmis, and his seldom entering into partisan debate when serving as Speaker. My image is that these two positions should be exactly what the phrases "of the Senate/House" state. Senator Mike Cooney does a good job of treating members on an equal basis, I believe. Sadly Speaker Sales can not be so credited.

Another big contributor to the current deterioration in the Montana Legislature, I believe, was the misguided public vote that gave Montana term limits. This constitutional change to a maximum of eight years in either house in any sixteen year period has proven to be a big contributor to the downward spiral of behavior and legislative effectiveness in my opinion. This is evidenced best by chairs of important committees be appointed in their second term in the legislature, which is totally inadequate preparation for a management position of chairing even a lesser committee.

Unfortunately, this problem is not an easy one to solve, because it will require a two-thirds vote of both houses for it to be put on the ballot again and some funding to sell any change to the public. We may have to learn to live with it. Annual sessions may improve the problem. There should also be a strict "code of ethics" adopted by the Legislature. Updating of rules of both the Senate and the House is long overdo, with an elimination of all possible differences, that may also be a positive influence.

None of this will happen during a session of the legislature, of course. Members are just too busy to work on these difficult matters, and session partisanship creates a level of insanity that precludes objective consideration of any such proposals. However, I think the time is long overdue for these problems to be addressed and the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House must take the lead on the matter. Caring for their own house has never really taken place as long a I have been an observer or participant in the Legislature. Conflicts within their own rules exist, and it is sometimes a practice to ignore or stretch existing rules. I think everyone agrees that the rule book must be enforced as it exists, and, if the becomes impossible, the rules should be changed.

Ray Peck, Ed.D. of Helena was a member of the House from 1983 to 2001.