Welcome new legislators! Here’s the first thing you have to do in the capitol once you are sworn in. Go find the bathrooms. Take a tour. Get a architectural plan of the capitol. Do what is ever necessary to find the bathrooms. Do it now. Why? Because in this era of term limits you have very little time to become experts on governing California.
We’ve all heard the phrase attached to the argument that because of term limits new legislators only have enough time to “find the bathroom” before they are term limited out. That means that the legislators cannot come to grips with the policy and politics of Sacramento to make important changes in California’s governance. They only have time to get their feet wet—then presto, they’re gone.
Whether current term limits are good or not is not the point here. Term limits is the law that the new class of 25 novice legislators will serve under. So there is no time for excuses, they have to get up to speed quickly.
In fact this class will have less time than most to get going. Governor Schwarzenegger said he will call another special session this month to immediately deal with the budget crisis. We have been warned the state will soon run out of money. That means this class of legislators along with the “veterans” who have served two to four years have to do something about it right away.
If you can pull this off the rest of what you have to do during your terms will be a piece of cake. So get sworn it, hug members of your family, go find the bathrooms, and get to work solving the budget crisis. It’s that simple. Then you can have all the time you want discovering the bars and restaurants of Sacramento in which to hold your fundraisers.