Senate President Pro-tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez are required to retire at the end of next year, as they will have reached the limit of their service in the legislature under the voter approved term limits in our State Constitution.
So, with a supreme interest in emphasizing the CAREER in "career politician" they are working to place a measure on the February ballot to severely WEAKEN term limits and substially extend their own legislative careers, among others.
The sad reality, however, is that Perata and Nunez are facing an electorate that is HOSTILE to weakening term limits. In an act of total hubris, they are actually trying to say that their measure strengthens term limits. How laughable.
Consider these points:
- Legislative term limits for Assemblymembers would be doubled, from six years to twelve years.
- For Senators, they could serve a third term thus extending their allowing time in the upper chamber by 50%.
- 24 sitting Assemblymembers (including Speaker Nunez) are termed out, but could serve another three terms if this passes.
- 18 sitting Senators (including President Pro-Tem Perata) are also termed out, but could serve another four years if this passes.
- That means that 30% of the Assembly, and 45% of the Senate would evade the current requirement that they retire next year.
- Fabian Nunez could remain Speaker of the Assembly until 2014!
- Don Perata could remain President Pro-tem of the Senate until 2012.
- The measure contains "loophole language" that would allow a great many legislators to serve much longer than twelve years…
Attached below is a downloadable .pdf file that contains three pages — one with all of these facts (shown above), and the two pages showing all of the currently term-limited legislators that would get to become CAREER POLITICIANS along with Perata and Nunez… (A big THANK YOU to the folks at U.S. Term Limits for putting it together.)
Your action item? SPREAD THE WORD. Download the file and e-mail it to everyone you know. Stop the hoax.