A New Answer for an Old Question: Should Alaska Once Again Consider a Unicameral Legislature?

• Citation: Vol. 27
• Publication year: 2010

§ 27 Alaska L. Rev. 257. A NEW ANSWER FOR AN OLD QUESTION: SHOULD ALASKA ONCE AGAIN CONSIDER A UNICAMERAL LEGISLATURE?

Alaska Law Review
Volume 27
Cited: 27 Alaska L. Rev. 257

A NEW ANSWER FOR AN OLD QUESTION: SHOULD ALASKA ONCE AGAIN CONSIDER A UNICAMERAL LEGISLATURE?

JONATHAN S. ROSS ^[*]

Abstract

A half-century after the creation of the Alaska legislature, is it still in the state's interests to have a two-house legislative system? At Alaska's Constitutional Convention, the framers gave great consideration to creating a unicameral legislature, however declined to do so, partially out of fear that an unusual governmental structure might stymie statehood efforts. However, unicameralism has long played a role in American democracy, and is currently a celebrated part of the government of Nebraska. Early proponents of such systems proclaimed that it would reduce redundancy in governing, would cut overall governmental costs, and would make government more transparent. Critics of one-house legislative systems argue that it can lead to hasty and ill-conceived legislation. Alaska might explore a unicameral system largely because of its size - a single legislature with smaller districts for each legislator would allow for better constituent services, particularly in large rural districts.

I. Introduction

On the evening of November 30, 1955, the fifty-five delegates to Alaska's Constitutional Convention returned to work in the meeting hall at the University of Alaska in the town of College, just west of Fairbanks. It was the Convention's twenty-third day, and up to that point, most of the delegates' time had been spent meeting in small committees, completing first drafts of what would become the forty-ninth state's governing document. General sessions had been brief and filled primarily with procedural matters-just that morning, the delegates had a meeting that was consumed predominantly by debate over an appropriation to pay the Convention's stenographer. But the evening of the thirtieth was to be different. The delegates returned that night to make a decision that would determine the very character of the new state government that they had been charged with creating- should Alaska have one legislative chamber or two?

The ensuing debate would be both a seminar in state governmental theory and a deep look at the nature of the territory that would become the state of Alaska. It would pitch delegates who saw Alaska as a blank slate upon which they could create the ideal state government against delegates who saw the completion of an acceptable constitution as another step down the arduous road to statehood.

The delegates settled upon a two-house legislature, and this system has persisted for Alaska's fifty-one years of statehood. The Convention's minutes indicate that the decision was a cautious one. First, a two-house legislature would look ordinary and palatable to Congress, which was very suspicious of the peculiar Alaskans. Second, it would allow the state to have one chamber where the seats were apportioned based upon geography, allowing the voters in Alaska's most remote corners to have just as loud a voice as those in Anchorage and Fairbanks.

Five decades later, these reasons for adopting Alaska's bicameral system are obsolete-Alaska is no longer a remote territory clamoring for statehood, and the Supreme Court has dictated that all state legislative seats must be apportioned based on population. Is it now time to reconsider the choice made at the Convention?

While adopting a two-house system made sense for Alaskans of the 1950s, who placed the greatest priority on becoming a state, there are unique elements of modern Alaska that suggest changing to a one-house system might be beneficial for Alaska today. Unicameralism is particularly well-suited to Alaska because: (1) it would allow some legislators to have smaller, more easily traveled districts, thereby simplifying the task of representing constituents widely diffused across the largest state in the union; (2) it would allow for more efficient passage of legislation; and (3) it would make the legislative process more open by eliminating the secretive dealings of the conference committee, thereby restoring confidence in a legislature that has been under scrutiny in recent years.

Should Alaska switch to a unicameral? This Note raises the question and then seeks to provide the information necessary to begin to answer it. It does so by first looking at the consideration of unicameralism at the state's Constitutional Convention. It then examines the history of some cameral choices in the United States and the competing arguments in favor of and against unicameralism. Third, it takes a close look at the experience of Nebraska, the only state presently with a unicameral legislature. Fourth, it examines the contemporary critiques of unicameralism. Finally, it applies these arguments for and against unicameralism to contemporary Alaska and analyzes the factors that point toward making the switch to unicameralism and those that point toward retaining the current legislative structure. ^[1]

II. The Creation of Alaska's Bicameral Legislature

A. The Territorial Legislature

Unicameralism was not an altogether unfamiliar concept to Alaskans when it was first introduced at the Convention. Between December of 1911 and August of 1912, the Sixty-second Congress considered and ultimately passed what would become the Home Rule Act of 1912, ^[2] granting the Territory of Alaska a legislature and substantial local autonomy. ^[3] This Act, coming on the heels of Congress's passage of territorial civil and criminal codes in 1889 and 1900, was a significant step towards statehood. ^[4]

James Wickersham, Alaska's non-voting congressional delegate who was said to be the most powerful political figure in the territory at the time, spearheaded the movement for territorial autonomy. ^[5] The ensuing debate, however, was driven largely by interests outside the state of Alaska. ^[6] A variety of interest groups focused their attention on it. Some groups sought to ensure that a territorial government would not upset their existing interests in Alaska, ^[7] while other reformers saw Alaska as a blank slate upon which they could impose their visions for society. ^[8]

The Senate Committee on Territories proposed a one-house legislature for the new territory. ^[9] Writing in 1923, early Alaska historian Jeanette Paddock Nichols stated, "[The committee] was of a mind to make the law-making body unicameral, to the great dismay of Wickersham, who feared that such action would kill his measure." ^[10] She reported that the proposal died when the House refused to pass the bill without a bicameral structure. ^[11] Ultimately, the Home Rule Act created an eight-member senate and a sixteen-member house of representatives, with each of the four judicial districts electing four representatives and two senators at-large. ^[12]

Nichols's history, written when Alaska was still in the early days of territorial government and more than three decades before the great debates of Alaska's Constitutional Convention, expresses great frustration with Congress's refusal to allow Alaska to experiment with a one-house system. She wrote:

Congress thereby demonstrated once more that it was bound by tradition and prefers to stick to it rather than to advance along the lines of experimental democracy. In this case it set up a legislature to be composed of two bodies of men who had duplicate qualifications, duplicate constituents, and duplicate work. ^[13]

Nichols's frustration seems to have stemmed from her belief that Alaska had been forced to forego becoming an innovator in state government because Washington officials feared too much experimentation in this peculiar, distant land. Since Alaska's elected representatives were focused primarily on appeasing the federal government in order to attain autonomy, Nichols felt as though Alaska was being unnecessarily constrained. This scenario would soon repeat itself.

Ernest Gruening, Alaska's territorial governor from 1939 until 1953, and a United States senator from 1959 until 1969, wrote in 1954 of the need "to reform the deficient system of representation in the territorial legislature which Congress had lazily imposed on Alaska." ^[14]

In the following years, Alaska's representatives repeatedly attempted to reform the territorial legislature-most attempts were ignored by a Congress bogged down with world wars and the Great Depression. ^[15] Several of the efforts, led by the residents of the area around Anchorage who were frustrated by the strict geographic-representative system imposed by Congress, sought to create a system of proportional representation for the legislature. ^[16] In the 1930 Census, the First Division, the quadrant of the state that included Anchorage, had a population of 25,241, with the Second, Third, and Fourth Divisions having populations of 11,877, 19,312, and 16,094, respectively. ^[17]

However, each division had been granted equal representation in both houses, meaning that four senators who frequently represented less than half of the territory's population could effectively veto any bill, since passage through both houses was necessary. ^[18] In 1942, Congress granted Alaska proportional representation in the Alaska House of Representatives only, despite Alaska's non-voting delegate having sought proportional representation in both houses. ^[19]...