Editorial: Senior legislators show their worth

Counting retirements has become a popular pastime in State Capitol corridors as the Minnesota Legislature winds toward the end of its two-year lawmaking cycle.

We kept a slightly different retirement list last week. It was striking how many key lawmaking moves were made by people who have announced that they will not seek reelection. Their swan songs were significant -- and telling. They underscored the value of multiterm legislative service.

Our admittedly incomplete "swan singers" list included:

• Rep. John Kriesel of Cottage Grove and Sen. Michael Jungbauer of East Bethel, both Republicans, a pair who skillfully pushed a bill expanding Minnesotans' ability to purchase fireworks during June and the first week of July. Though their bill met with a gubernatorial veto, winning bipartsan House and Senate backing for the measure was itself an achievement.

Kriesel's decision to step down after one term deprives the House of a rising star. Three-termer Jungbauer has an independent streak that makes him a valuable player. That independence likely contributed to his loss of party backing after redistricting paired him with another Republican, Sen. Michelle Benson.

• Though not the chief sponsor, Rep. Denise Dittrich, DFL-Champlin, was instrumental in forging a broad bipartisan compromise on future management of the state's 2.6 million surface acres of school trust land. Gov. Mark Dayton signed the bill Saturday.

• DFL Rep. Nora Slawik spent last week trying to pave the way for early education scholarships to find their way into the Vikings stadium bill. That unusual linkage has a precedent -- Target Field and the Hennepin County library system were similarly linked in 2006. It takes a senior legislator to recall and reuse such maneuvers; Slawik is calling it quits after seven terms.

A rash of departures like theirs is not unusual. The Legislature has long had a pattern of heavy turnover. The 2010 election produced 60 new members -- 30 percent of the whole. Redistricting assures that another wave of freshmen is coming in 2013.

Only about one in four sitting legislators has been in office for longer than 10 years. Those senior legislators are valuable institutional resources. Without their knowledge, memories and mastery of the legislative process, the power of lobbyists and staff members would grow and accountability to the voters would diminish. Term limits are not only unnecessary in Minnesota; they would be detrimental.

What is unusual is the candor Robling voiced as she announced her decision to retire. "I fear that statesmen are vanishing as partisanship deepens," her April 13 announcement said. "It is very difficult to pass common-sense measures into law these days because special interest groups block or promote agendas that only benefit themselves."

We share her concern. And we fear that unless voters consciously direct their votes to reasonable thinkers like Robling, the trend she decries will only get worse when a big Class of 2012 arrives next year.

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