A few weeks ago, the organization California Forward sent a letter to the Governor and members of the State Legislature outlining what they believe to be a series of reforms that, if passed, would improve the condition of government here in California.  You can see that letter here (h/t KQED). 

Many of the reforms have merit, a few are more questionable — all deserve closer examination.

But for the purposes of this commentary, I am focused on what would be, for me, a "deal killer" when it comes to "reforms" — and that is a proposal to severely weaken California’s legislative term limits, placed into the State Constitution back in 1990.  Three times now, most recently with Proposition 93, the political-class have sought to undo in some part what the voters put into place — and all three times their efforts have been rejected.

Under the "reform" proposed by California Forward, while an individual currently is limited, in their lifetime, to serving three terms in the State Assembly and two terms in the State Senate, their change would allow someone a lengthy six-term (or twelve year) stint in the Assembly, or a similarly long dozen years in the State Senate.

Doubling the amount of time that one can serve in the Assembly is a severe weakening of term-limits, and will lead to the kind of consolidation of power in Sacramento that brought us the infamous reign of Speaker Willie Brown, who used that power to take the legislature down the road of growth in the size and scope of state government.

We note that no where in California Forward’s suggested "reforms" is the issue of the pervasive influence and control of the state’s public employee unions addressed.  What could be a more toxic cocktail than giving union-controlled legislators more time in office to wreak havoc on California taxpayers?

Today U.S. Term Limits President Philip Blumel has fired off a letter to the leaders of California Forward (it is linked below), one of them (shock) is a former California Assembly Speaker, Bob Hertzberg.

Blumel writes in his letter that “By lengthening the terms to 12 years in either House, your ‘reform’ would double the time politicians can sit in the Assembly and increase by a full third the time they can occupy a seat in the Senate.”

In his letter, Blumel promises that the measure would be defeated as previous repeals had been before. “In 2002, when term limits opponents tried to undermine the law with Proposition 45, Californians supported term limits even more strongly. And as recently as last year, the people of California again came to its defense, dealing Proposition 93 a resounding defeat.  12 years in either body is a career. And the amount of damage an entrenched politician can do  in that length of time is immeasurable."

Not mentioned in the letter is that US Term Limits wrote a seven-figure check to help defeat efforts by ex-Speaker Fabian Nunez to weaken term limits in the last election cycle. 

Frankly, if I were the folks at California Forward, I would jettison the term-limits weakening component of their proposal so that the rest of their ideas can get some serious vetting by stakeholders. 

Otherwise, mark my words, that one item with be the anchor that pulls the entire California Forward series of proposals to the bottom of the ocean…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.