“Marriage, like government, is a series of compromises. One must give and take, repair and restrain, endure and be patient.” – Samuel Smiles

My wife, Lara, and I celebrate our 10-year anniversary this week. She says I am required to mention her in this column every so often, so I figured a milestone anniversary would be one of those times.

As many of you can attest, marrying someone introduces you to your partner’s interests, some of which you never considered before.

Lara, unfortunately, was forced into reading my weekly ramblings about government – a topic for which she does not care one single lick – while I began watching several of her television shows. One of those shows was the History Channel’s “American Pickers.”

For those who do not know the show, it followed two friends traveling around the country as they searched for old junk in people’s barns, sheds and basements that they purchase, clean up and sell as antiques with a huge markup.

Oddly enough, our worlds collided in the form of Garlan Gudger. Gudger has been featured on “American Pickers” once or twice as he owns an architectural salvage company in Cullman.

He also serves as a state senator for Cullman, Marion and Winston counties and earlier this year was chosen to serve as the president pro tempore of the Alabama State Senate. In Alabama the president pro tempore is probably the closest thing there is to a person in charge of the Senate.

At the close of this year’s legislative session, Gudger made some intriguing comments on Alabama Public Television’s “Capitol Journal” about how the rules of parliamentary procedure in the Senate may need to change in the future.

“Looking at those rules, that’s something that I’m going to have to look at going forward along with (the Senate) Legislative Council in saying, hey, we’re going to have to change some of this,” Gudger said.

Gudger’s interest on future rules changes for deliberation seems to stem from the Senate’s inability to pass several bills that deal with local legislation – that is legislation generally dealing with one county or municipality – before the time limit of this year’s legislative session ran out.

Some of those bills were important to constituents and local government officials back in legislators’ home districts, such as a few bills that would have restructured how tax revenue is distributed in Baldwin County.

It is often difficult for the Alabama Senate to pass the same volume of bills as the House of Representatives because the two chambers operate similarly to the national government’s Senate and House.

If you remember your high school government class, you might recall the House operates with rules to limit debate time. This is because the House is larger, so not limiting debate time on House bills would probably lead to little ever getting accomplished.

The Senate has fewer members, so debate can be more open, and tactics like the filibuster – where one or more senators prevent all bills from passing by keeping a debate on one bill from ending until their demands are met – are available to be used.

One senator can also force an entire bill to be read aloud which often functions as a slow-down tactic.

Gudger has not said precisely what his idea for a rules change would entail, but to me it sounds like he is considering creating special rules for debate on local legislation in order to limit senators’ ability to slow down the voting process for local bills only while keeping the current debate rules for statewide legislation largely unchanged.

Creating an easier path for local legislation might be a good idea, but I think an even better idea would be to use this opportunity to limit the amount of local legislation with which both the House and Senate are involved in the first place.

Let county and city leaders and the voters in Baldwin County figure out their own formula to distribute tax revenues. Likewise, let counties and cities determine their own structure for fees and fines, their own zoning laws, their own local board appointment processes, and so on without the legislative delegation having their fingers in the pie.

That way the Legislature does not have to worry with all these local bills and possibly running out of time to pass them. Legislators can just worry about statewide laws which should be the general idea for a state government.

The chances for this idea getting traction are miniscule, but, hey, crazier things have happened. Lara has put up with me for 10 years, after all.