As members of the General Assembly staggered out of Raleigh a few days ago after finishing their 11-month ordeal, there were a couple of notable quips.

Governor Easley, observing that lawmakers had waited to decamp until after he lit the state Christmas tree, reckoned that next time he'd move things along by lighting the tree in August.

And Manteo's Marc Basnight, the Senate president pro tem, to whose tune other senators often feel an urge to dance, allowed that his colleagues' duty is now unmistakable. They finally should go ahead and impose limits on the length of legislative sessions, Basnight said -- or they should just march outside their Jones Street lair and lynch themselves. In disgrace, he presumably meant to add.

Since it's hard to recall Basnight ever issuing another ultimatum of that gravity, even allowing for a little heat-of-the-moment hyperbole, it's fair to conclude that he must regard the lack of restrictions on the legislative schedule as an issue of supreme import. Should the rest of us be as worked up as he is?

The simplistic criticism of sessions that stretch on, and on, and on goes to their cost. Sure enough, it was duly reported that the session just completed, which shattered previous records for length, ran up a tab of $20.2 million -- hard to dismiss as chump change.

But what fraction of that would have been a reasonable amount to spend, given that lawmakers this year had to sort through an unholy tangle of difficult and contentious issues of major consequence to the state? Certainly this was destined to be a session that would run longer than normal -- so even if there was some occasional wheel-spinning, as there surely was, it can't be regarded as having posed a serious cost problem.

A more troubling issue -- and one that Basnight, among others, is especially concerned about -- has to do with the effect of protracted sessions on the legislature's very make-up.

Clearly, having responsibilities in Raleigh for 11 months out of 12 can put an onerous financial burden on lawmakers who not paid at a full-time rate for their services. It's a burden that many people would find impossible to carry. And there's personal hardship as well in the form of lost family time. The goal of having a General Assembly whose membership represents some sort of cross-section of the citizenry obviously takes a beating when keeping pace with the legislative rigamarole becomes so highly impractical.

In fact, some well-regarded members have chosen to bail out -- even before this year's marathon -- because they couldn't successfully balance legislative demands against their professional and personal commitments. The legislature's little block-walled offices increasingly are occupied by people who can afford not to hold down a regular job -- the rich and the comfortably retired. Of course, we can hope that they'll make good decisions for the rest of us out of a sense of noblesse oblige, if not ordinary fairness. But the merits of having a legislature composed of people from diverse backgrounds are tough to dispute.

If long sessions discourage the kind of membership mix we should regard as healthy, there remains the tricky business of what to do about them. The Basnight approach would put us more in line with the practice in Virginia and South Carolina, to pick two nearby examples, where legislators have to complete their business within specified time frames.

That model may work. Whether it's the best way to legislate, however, is far from clear. It can lead to hasty decisions made by leadership fiat, with lots of input from lobbyists but precious little from the general public.

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