Lessons from Lincoln - emulating Nebraska's legislative structure

Members of law making bodies are strictly distinguished by their partisan affiliations- members are identified as "democrats" or "republicans", and the group having the most of their members elected gets to be "in control of the legislative body"; if there are more democrats than republicans, the democrats should organize and control the activities of the legislature.

The concept of the majority to control the activities of the legislature is embedded in our need to have an organized group of people to assume the management and operation of the legislature to assure the constituents a semblance of accountability and transparency. In the past there were several legislatures, when the entire twenty-one senators were all democrats- when that happened, the membership became fractionalized; wherein the emergence of "factions" separation based, allied themselves under one individual senator- in essence, the membership evolves into a "non-partisan" body.

On these situations also, organizational structure of the legislature were formed on the basis of appeasing the entire membership. They did it by insuring that each senator will have a "leadership" position. The legislature then would have a speaker, vice speaker, secretary, 18 committee chairman- totaling 21 members. Of course, over the years, this arrangement has proven to be non-productive and did not lend itself to what we would call "an efficient operation".

Currently the 29th Guam Legislature with a non-traditional leadership structure, with the speaker, vice speaker and the secretary , committee chairman on agenda - all democrats - and for every other committee chair position, occupied by republicans.

For all practical purposes, no one partisan group in the legislature really controls the 29th Guam Legislature - it is pure and simple "a sharing of power"- so far, it has proven to be more responsive, seemingly operates more efficiently, and decorum appears to be quite good- their individual behaviors "of and off" the legislature floor, quite frankly, between and among themselves are filled with a higher dignity and respect.

Admittedly, the 29th Guam Legislature operates more and more like the state legislature of Nebraska, similar in being the same unicameral. But, the similarity does not end there; the 29th Guam Legislature members are currently functioning on a "non-partisan" basis also.

Shouldn't future members of our Guam Legislature be all "elected on a non-partisan" basis like how the members of the state legislature of Nebraska gets elected? We can still have accountability and transparency on the basis of "individual members". Maybe, maybe, we should look at this concept.

It may not happen during my lifetime, but, I believe this would eventually happen.

What do you think?

Joe T. San Agustin has served Guam as former chairperson of the Democratic Party of Guam and as former speaker of the Guam Legislature. He is currently chairman of the GovGuam Retirement Fund.