From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary…
California’s legislature is getting ready to water down the state’s 16-year-old term limit law by allowing members to serve up to 14 years in either house and by "grandfathering" in the existing Assembly and Senate leadership, allowing members, in effect, to restart the clock on their service.
Term-limit advocates can’t do anything to block this incumbent-protection scheme from being placed before voters on February’s primary ballot. But they believe they can defeat the proposal partly by promoting a countermeasure to stir up old populist resentment of legislative perks. The measure would strip away a legislator’s cherished tax-free $153-a-day allowances for lodging and meal expenses incurred while the legislature is in session. The per diems add up to more than $30,000 a year for a typical solon.
Anita Anderson, a San Francisco political activist, says she believes the payments are a rip-off since often the legislature is gaveled into session and then immediately adjourned just so members can claim reimbursement for that day’s "expenses." Ms. Anderson says she plans to publicize examples of per diem abuses if the legislature persists in trying to weaken term limits.
It’s not as if state lawmakers will be able to plead poverty if the per diems vanish. They already earn $113,098 a year plus such perks as a state-leased car. That makes Golden State solons among the best paid in the country. Legislators I spoke to say they look forward to weaker terms limit that would enable them to stay in office a few more years. However, they should also consider how much less comfortable legislative life might be if they have to brown-bag their lunches and sleep on a friend’s couch when convening in Sacramento.