Saturday, April 05, 2008
(9:38 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Down with the governor!
The Illinois state House looks like it will pass a bill allowing the recall of the governor and other state officials, though it's unclear how it will fare in the Senate.As one of the blogosphere's foremost Blagojevich-haters, I am of course strongly in favor of this bill. Blagojevich is a kind of worst-case scenario of a lazy and capricious governor, but I don't think that removing such a person goes far enough. There is a provision whereby at set intervals, the voters in Illinois are presented with the option of calling a new constitutional convention. At the next opportunity, they should do so, and the constitution should be rewritten to severely curtail the power of the executive -- above all, getting rid of the governor's power to veto legislation. In fact, ideally the governor should be appointed by the legislature, to remove any possibility of a perceived popular mandate to do more than simply coordinate law enforcement and administer the state bureaucracy.
