Limiting terms in office is elitism masquerading as populism. It suggests that a mandatory expiration date is a good way to remove crusty old codgers who have lost their freshness, and to refresh musty government institutions with fresh blood.
But in reality, it says ordinary voters aren’t sophisticated enough to know when it’s time to replace a respected incumbent, so it’s necessary to make it impossible for that to happen.
The term-limits movement swept the country in the 1990s, starting with Colorado, California and Oklahoma. The Colorado initiative was favored by 70 percent of voters. Even The Denver Post endorsed the idea.
In all, 21 states passed term limits for legislators, but they’ve been repealed by the legislatures in Utah and Idaho, and declared unconstitutional by the state’s highest courts in Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. That leaves only 15 states with legislative term limits, including Colorado.
No, this hasn’t “destroyed” the legislature, as supporters of judicial term limits like to point out. But it has made the deliberative body a lot less deliberative, and eroded its efficiency and collegiality,
In August, a coalition of state government associations – the National Conference of State Legislatures, Council of State Governments, and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation – issued a paper based on a three-year study called the Joint Project on Term Limits (JPTL).
Not surprisingly, it didn’t find much to recommend term limits. After all, these are not exactly anti-government organizations. But as any observer of the legislative process can attest, the report contains a great deal of truth.
In legislatures where members must leave after six or eight years, “one can see a new urgency and a new aggressiveness,” the study says. Newcomers don’t have much time to learn the ropes or build expertise.
“As a result of this new urgency, a decline in civility and an increase in conflict were reported in term-limited legislatures throughout the JPTL case studies. Legislators have less time to get to know and trust one another.”
This leads to more arguments and bad manners, less consensus and coalition-building. There are fewer legislator-experts in major policy areas such as education, and more bills designed to win re-election (“brochure bills,” one Colorado legislator called them).
“These legislatures no longer have a small group of long-serving members whose leadership and expertise can guide a largely inexperienced legislature,” the study said.
Most of those changes are internal, where the public scarcely notices.
“No legislative leader in a term-limited state has served more than four years in a leadership post, and the vast majority have been limited to two years.” There’s less reason for members to listen to a leader who has to leave in two years, “and leaders are less able to sanction members who challenge them.”
Turnover in committee chairs “dramatically increased,” with inevitable loss of experience. Loss of cooperation and respect “seems to have accelerated in states with term limits.” Committee recommendations are increasingly ignored on the floor.
Partisan legislative staff members have more influence, because they’ve worked with legislators on campaigns; newcomers don’t fully understand what the nonpartisan research staff is supposed to do.
It’s tougher for lobbyists, too, because they have to keep making new friends. And the lobbyists who’ve spent years building a good reputation may lose out to newer lobbyists who aren’t as scrupulous. “On occasion, short-term lobbying goals have come [to] outweigh the importance of long-term credibility,” the study found.
This may be what term-limits advocates really want – a government that doesn’t work very well, so that they can convince voters to continue to take its powers away.
So if you think it’s a good idea to make the judicial branch of government as inefficient, partisan and leaderless as the legislative branch, by all means vote “yes” on Amendment 40.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
