Trejbal: Let’s really reduce the size of government
Shrink the General Assembly
Christian Trejbal
Trejbal is a Roanoke Times editorial writer. He is stationed at the paper’s New River Valley bureau.
Virginians surely have developed a new conception of government in recent years. Deep spending cuts have left a leaner, less satisfying commonwealth. From schools to law enforcement to highways, services have suffered. It is a new Virginia of reduced expectations.
Yet one piece of succulent fat still hangs from the bone. The General Assembly should trim down.
October 10, 2010 - 9:47 AM
What I suspect that you really want is larger districts in northern VA and the tidewater area which are Dem strongholds thus making VA a solid blue state.
Larger districts dilute the influence of each individual voter. It would take more votes for a candidate to win an election. Larger districts would make districts more heterogeneous and I suspect you hope more liberal.
So you don’t actually want to reduce the size of government then, John R?
You have some odd suspicions given that reducing the size of the House, say, by 10 would cost Northern Virginia more seats than it would cost SW Virginia.
As for your thinking that the more heterogeneous districts are more liberal, well for that to be true, the average Virginia voter would have to be liberal. Do you truly believe that?
Nice thing about throwing around suspicions is that you don’t actually have to base them in any sort of fact.
The Tidewater district almost always votes Republican – It’s a military area, more conservative than anywhere else in the state.
Districts of any size dilute the voter’s influence. The seat goes to the largest bloc of voters in the district, and all the other residents there are in effect disfranchized.
your group could be 10%, or even 40%, of the state’s population. But if you are evenly distributed geographically — as most minorities are — you will be a minority in every district and will never have ANY representation in the legislature.
This is what smaller government means to me. Having larger districts doesn’t mean less access to elected representatives considering today’s easy transportation and communication methods.
$800,000 to $1MM savings should be looked at, quite seriously and rigorously. Since redistricting is coming up soon, what better time. Since the economy is shrinking the middle class (upper to lower) and pushing greater numbers into actual poverty due to a lack of living wage jobs, what better time.
Even businesses that are well run know that eliminating a few “chief” jobs is better for the “troops” who provide actual services for the citizens (grunts).