California may limit term of term limits

Proponents say they just want a little "wiggle room" for popular politicians, forced out of office by term limits, to be able to run for office one more time.

Opponents say the wiggle room will turn into an escape clause to get around term-limit laws and create statehouses filled with career-politicians they were designed to stop.

Eleven years after the citizen juggernaut of setting term limits for statehouse politicians began rolling here - followed by 18 more states through the '90s - the state where it all started is considering giving the idea an interesting tweak.

A measure called Proposition 45 will ask voters on March 5 to loosen term-limit laws. If passed, it would allow assembly members to run for a fourth term (and senators for a third term) if they can collect enough signatures from voters in their districts to equal 20 percent of the district's vote in the last election.

National observers say the vote will be an important test of whether public opinion has shifted away from the "throw-the-bums-out" sentiments of the past decade. Elsewhere in the country, term-limit laws are being challenged. This past Friday, Idaho's legislature repealed its term-limit laws, becoming the fourth state to do so since 1997.

"There is some feeling in many areas of the country that the issue of term limits has passed its vogue, because the public is showing high degrees of satisfaction with both government institutions and legislators," says Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College, in Northfield Minnesota.

The debate raging here isn't too dissimilar to the verbal fisticuffs that have always raged over term limits. But now, both supporters and detractors of the laws point to evidence gathered over the past decade to bolster their case.

Those who continue to support term limits say the laws have brought more diversity into the political process. In 1990, there were nine Latinos, and 17 women in the California statehouse, for instance. Today, there are 26 and 34 respectively.

"There are more teachers, doctors, small business people in government now bringing the voices of ordinary people into the process where they were absent before," says Dan Schnur, a political analyst at the University of California, Berkeley, and an advisor to the "No on 45" campaign.

But detractors decry the lack of experience, and loss of institutional memory needed to tackle such complex questions as utility deregulation or understand California's massive $100 billion budget. And they say the relative inexperience of legislators puts them at a disadvantage compared to both career lobbyists, and the executive branch.

"Now they have people with just two years experience in state government trying to figure out how to make up a $12 billion deficit," says Karen Caves, spokeswoman for the Prop. 45 campaign.

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