Term Limits, on balance, have been good for California. Term limits have been around long enough now that there are actually a lot of people involved in politics who really don’t remember what it was like before they were voted into place by the California electorate back in 1990. What we had before term limits was the era of the career politician. You know how your local Congressman has been in office for what seems like a lifetime? Well, that is how it used to be for members of the Senate and the Assembly. In many cases, members of the legislature never had any other career before leaping into state house. Once they got there, legislators would serve in office for decades (or even longer). This created a system where the personal relationships became the dominant factor in the Capitol — which ended up primarily serving the ends of crafty politicians like uber-Speaker Willie Brown. Now there is a healthy turn-over of legislators that insures that those who are elected do not lose touch with those that put them in office.
Unfortunately, because of the grossly unbalanced legislative districts crafted by a politician-drafting redistricting plan, we still have liberals dominating the California legislature. So term limits has not brought about a lessoning of the growth in the size and scope of state government. But it truly is a step in the right direction. Existing term limits, combined with a fair redistricting, would combine to provide Californians with a unique opportunity to see a change in the dominent ideology of the Capitol — away from the far left extreme views that drive public policy in the state.
That said, there are some out there who are critical of our current term limits. They argue that it means that politicians are always looking for their ‘next political office’ and that the turnover of legislators has resulted in a shift in policy expertise away from lawmakers and over to lobbyists. Well, I would actually argue that a politician who is looking for their next job, by necessity, needs to be thinking about what the voters back home are thinking and what they want. And as for policy expertise – I am okay with elected representatives relying on policy experts around them for input. This is far better than what we had before — with entretched multi-decade incumbents who, for all purposes, lived in Sacramento.
Mandated term limits are an imperfect solution to be sure. The ideal term limits would come from an electorate being unhappy with a politician, and voters choosing to turn them out. But as a practical matter, in America, uncumbancy is tantamount to eternal occupancy of a political office. This is why the voters passed term limits in the first place. They liked the general idea of turnover, but did not want to have to single out their own legislator. They supported this broad proposal for all — and they still very much do.
Term limits remain popular in California, and most voters oppose weakening the six and eight year limits, in the Assembly and Senate respectively. It would be a perilous vote, indeed, for a Sacramento legislator to cast a vote to place a weakening of term limits on the ballot. Especially if that politician wants to run for another office…
Today we feature a column from U.S. Term Limits President Paul Jacob on this very subject that is worth reading!
**Note, in this column last Friday, I erroneously claimed that the Capitol Morning Report is distributed to some at no charge. Let me state for the record: If you want to buy the CMR, they are happy to sell it to you. But there is no such thing as a free breakfast, or a free subscription to to the CMR!**
January 29th, 2007 at 12:00 am
They don’t like term limits but don’t like redistricting even more–THAT’s why they want to pair the two. They fear redistricting more than T.L. but realize many voters will pass on redistricting in order to not ‘give up’ on T.L.
January 29th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Jon, you really should spend more time in Sacramento. Term limits and the revolving door has limited the know-how of legislators. And it’s forcing legislators to start running for other offices and against each other from the moment they are sworn in. The proposals aren’t about giving members more years, they’re about allowing them to spend more time in one body of the legislature, where they will have the time to develop policy expertise that citizens expect them to have. When you say it’s okay to rely on the “people around them,” too often that turns out to be lobbyists with vested interests.
January 29th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Because of term limits, no one will ever be Speaker of the
State Assembly again for 14 years, as Willie Brown was.
Speakers now typically last 18 months to 2 years, and
cannot accumulate the amazing political and fundraising
power that Mr. Brown did.
All of these changes are good for California.
Mr. Brown’s example was the deciding factor in Prop. 140’s
passage in Nov. 1990 (adoption of current term limits).
The legislature allowed itself to be largely ruled by 1 man,
and voters rightly rejected that.
January 29th, 2007 at 12:00 am
We actually need to go one step further than term limits and redistricting… we need to go back to a part-time legislature with part-time pay.
We need legislators who actually live in the real world under the laws they create. We need people who sign the front of a paycheck not people who have always signed the back. We need people who have been sucessful in life such that taking a part-time job is not a hardship but rather a public service.
If Sacramento was populated with people who had been sucessful in the private sector, the lame argument that policy expertise must be developed would fall flat. For people sucessful in the real world, those decisions are made on a daily basis, for the majority of the boobs that inhabit Sacramento now; those decisions tax their abilities.