A TAPster beat me to the punch in dismissing Rep. Gary Pendleton’s headline-grabbing but misguided idea of limiting the length of legislative sessions:

Rep. Pendleton bravely talks about how other, larger states get their work done in 60 or 90 days and North Carolina’s General Assembly languishes for eight or nine months, sometimes longer. He’s established a non-partisan committee to examine the issue, always a swell way to add a new binder to the bookshelf of forlorn ideas.

Attempts have been made in the past to legislate session lengths, but those who make the laws can change the laws and they always did when time ran out. The only way is a constitutional amendment approved by the voters, who could care less.

When Pendleton’s little committee examines other states, it will discover that they bypass constitutional session limits with out-of-session committee meetings, multiple special sessions and other tricks that consume as much time, energy and expense as an actual session.

Another flaw with the idea: Government operates 24/7/365. Whether or not you like the legislature, it’s good to have elected representatives of the people monitoring that operation for more than just two or three months every year.

On another front, the TAPster adds:

The real tragedy of the search for a new UNC system president isn’t the Board of Governors’ clumsy, junior high process, but the failure of the state’s public universities over the last two decades to develop, educate and train someone who was qualified to do the job.