A decade ago, reformers pitched term limits as the solution to most of the major problems besetting California government. Getting rid of the “career politicians,” suggested supporters of 1990’s Proposition 140, would diffuse the power of special interests over state affairs, bring more diversity to the Legislature, reduce partisan extremism, and lead to representatives being more in step with public opinion.
Some of those benefits actually resulted, sort of. There’s no question that a few of the changes wrought by term limits in the state Legislature have been positive. But on balance, the draconian limits imposed by Proposition 140 have probably done more harm than good to California government.
Term limits, like them or not, are here to stay. Though massively unpopular in the Legislature, they still enjoy a great deal of support among voters which is why an Assembly bill that would have put a measure on the ballot to extend the length of term limits was soundly defeated last week.
In an election year, it’s pretty unlikely that legislators would have the gumption to do anything to modify term limits. But the issue is far from dead; as long as there are legislators who want to keep their jobs, there will be an effort to eliminate or extend term limits.
Opinions differ widely on whether term limits have really improved the conduct of state government. On the plus side, they have led to greater diversity in the Legislature, which today contains more women and Latinos than it did before Proposition 140. But one would be hard pressed to demonstrate that special interests have less influence today than they did a decade ago; if anything, the pressure on state officials to raise election money seems to have intensified. Now that they lack the advantage of running as incumbents, many elected officials now merely enter new races for new offices when their terms expire meaning they need more money from special interests than ever before.
More importantly, term limits have actually decreased the choices for voters while lowering the professionalism of the Legislature. New members of the Assembly and Senate find themselves running key committees with only a year or two of legislative experience, inevitably leading to mistakes and problems. Constant turnover in any business leads to trouble, with the lost time and productivity that comes with continually training new people and reinventing common practices, and the Legislature is no different.
And the problem isn’t confined to elected officials: The best legislative staffers have already fled Sacramento, tired of being forced to look for new jobs every few years. Voters, meanwhile, are left without the choice of re-electing someone who may be doing an excellent job, simply because that person has been termed out of office.
Have term limits decreased partisan politics, as supporters said they would? Considering that key battles like the recent one over the budget are consistently split sharply along party lines, that seems highly dubious. Are legislators more in touch with public concerns? Arguably, yes, but that would be very hard to prove.
The bottom line is that the positive results of term limits are outweighed by the negative ones. There is, however, a solution that would preserve the major gains while decreasing the losses: Don’t scrap term limits, extend them. The recent Assembly proposal to extend the length of service in both houses to 12 years (currently it’s six years in the Assembly, eight in the Senate) is a good idea whose time unfortunately hasn’t come.
But there’s always next year.
