The closing of this year's "short session" of the General Assembly on Thursday served to remind us that the opening day of the new baseball season is not far off.
And that's about the best thing we have to say about the session — that it's ending serves to remind us of better days to come.
Little good came out of the session, well, little to the good of the state as a whole. Special interests got their fair share, cashing in the IOUs the politicians gave them by accepting the their campaign contributions during previous elections.
The Washingtonization of Indianapolis is pretty much complete now, with lobbyists writing the legislation their employers want to see enacted and the grateful "lawmakers" following through by casting their votes accordingly.
We're not so naive as to believe that state politics were ever devoid of lobbyists and that legislators were once immune to the influence of the special interests.
Lobbyists were standing in the shade of that elm tree down in Corydon when the first state constitution was adopted almost 200 years ago.
It's just that their influence on lawmakers is so much more pronounced these days, to the point of its being openly flaunted within the halls of the state capitol.
It's getting to be downright embarrassing, so close these relationships between lawmakers and lobbyists.
Why there is even a short session of the General Assembly at all is the question the public should be asking.
For most of the state's history only one session was held, convening every two years for the purpose of writing and adopting a new budget.
If, in the meantime, a matter of great importance came up, a special session would be called to deal with it. Lawmakers arrived, did what needed to be done, and went home.
Then, in 1970, and thanks in large part to work overseen by former governor and one-time Vincennes attorney Matthew E. Welsh, the state constitution was amended to authorize yearly meetings of the General Assembly, and it's been downhill ever since.
For when the legislature is in session it means lawmakers are in need of something to occupy their time, so they introduce hundreds of bills, almost all of them at the coaxing of lobbyists who are themselves at the service of narrow special interests.
And unfortunately, many of these proposals end up making it into the final drafts of legislation that then head to the governor's desk for signature to begun law.
(The next year, lawmakers inevitably have to go back and "correct" mistakes or "clarify" poorly-written laws they'd approved the year before.)
It seems to us that, overall, the state would be better served if the short session were called off and legislators instead spent the year in intense study of the larger issues facing Hoosiers — education and workforce training, economic development, protecting natural resources, etc.
Judging from this year's outcome (and this year was hardly any different from previous short sessions) doing away with the "election year" gathering would only be good for Indiana.