To Boost Service, Legislature Needs More Workers on Floor

Politics is a customer-service industry. I found myself contemplating this as I made my way, like 22 million other Americans, to Home Depot for my spring gardening project.

As any shopper knows, the more clerks on duty, the better the service. Home Depot employs one associate for every 68 customers. By comparison, California citizens employ one state senator for every 850,000 people and one Assembly member for every 450,000.

It's no wonder surveys show we're deeply disgruntled with our Legislature. The ratio of customers -- we, the people -- to elected representatives is way off.

In California, 120 legislators serve the interests and needs of 35 million people. It's as if Home Depot had only 75 employees.

Granted, this is not an entirely apt comparison. But even by government standards California is way out of whack.

We have the largest legislative districts in America, by a long shot. Our Assembly districts more than triple the population of next-ranked districts in Texas.

A California state Senate district has more people than 30 percent of the world's countries and six U.S. states.

Imagine the entire population of North Dakota being represented by one person. That's every tree-hugger, every gun-toter, every school district, every city and every business, all competing for a single vote and a single voice in the Legislature.

One representative for a half a million or more people is simply not acceptable. It invites corruption because campaigns in these overpopulated districts are costly. It forces citizens with conflicting interests to compete for a single vote, which invariably means less-powerful voices are silenced. And it stretches representatives so thin they are often barely able to connect with engaged citizens, let alone the alienated.

Despite its booming population, California has not increased the number of seats in our Legislature since 1879, when the population was 865,000, about what one Senate district contains now.

If we are to put the people back in the driver's seat of state government, we must address our historic negligence and reduce state legislative districts to human scale. California is too big to accommodate districts approaching the national average. But we could grow the Legislature from today's 120 members to 200. With 150 Assembly members and 50 senators, this modern Legislature would reflect the founders' conception of a deliberative, distant upper house and a passionate lower house that is tied closely to the people.

Assembly members would be more accountable in districts with about 230,000 constituents, and California would benefit from new voices now unheard.

The next time you're shopping for daffodils and diatomaceous earth, imagine if there was one checkout line for the combined populations of Cupertino, Gilroy, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Los Gatos, Campbell and Saratoga.

If we really want our government to work better, we need to hire more representatives, not just shift them around. After all, our representatives work for us, so we are only shortchanging ourselves.