The House takes up a state constitutional amendment tomorrow that would make it easier for average Granite Staters to serve in the Legislature and reduce the amount of time lawmakers spend meddling in the people's business.

CACR 20 would return the Legislature to biennial sessions (every other year). That's what the Founders originally mandated. Then in 1984 legislators passed, and the people approved, a constitutional amendment that switched us to annual legislative sessions. The result: legislators now have business in Concord for six months of each year, sometimes more. That brought about two big changes.

1: It released a flurry of legislation. Every single year there are hundreds of bills being passed in Concord. The people are never free from the meddling hand of the Legislature.

2: It changed the composition of that increasingly active Legislature. Doubling the time legislators had to spend in Concord shrank the pool of people who could serve.

Annual sessions made the Legislature simultaneously more active and somewhat less representative. That is a double blow to liberty. And yet some Republicans don't want to undo this because they think annual sessions keep a check on executive power. Even if that were true, the price is too high.

This particular amendment has little support and is not expected to pass. If it fails, the people should make sure that it comes up again. Restoring biennial sessions would return an important check on state power that the Founders were wise enough to require.