Rethinking Term Limits

California voters enacted term limits for members of the California State Assembly and Senate with Proposition 140 in 1990. We did that to eliminate the career politician and to encourage what we believed might be something closer to a citizen legislature. Well, that didn’t work. We now have a legislature that is no better, and perhaps worse, than the one we had without term limits. So if these people are no better than their predecessors, what did we achieve? If we achieved anything, it is less than obvious to most observers.

So now we think we can solve the problem by amending the California State Constitution to once again establish a citizen legislature instead of the full time, albeit limited term legislators we’re stuck with today.

Once an advocate of the idea for a Citizens Legislature, I’ve been rethinking the idea; I’m not so sure we want to go there.

Depending upon whose statistics you want to use, California was the 5th or 6th largest economy in the entire world just one year ago. By my own calculations, it comes in about 8th; but let’s not argue about a couple of billion dollars one way or the other. Let’s focus on the fact that California is in the trillion dollar bracket and a trillion bucks needs to be managed by people who understand how to run a trillion dollar plus business instead of looking at it as a trillion dollar bank account from which they can draw (or borrow upon) at will to support each of their special projects. The average experience for a member of the Senate is currently 4 years; for a member of the Assembly, 3 years. How can any group with such limited experience understand the long range implications of their day to day decisions? They spend more time fighting over territory than they do on trying to take a futuristic view of California.

My current theory is that we don’t need to overhaul the way we select, maintain or schedule the activities of our legislature. What we need to do is work harder on ensuring that our legislature is made up of a more balanced group of representatives. How do we do that? We do it through insisting that reapportionment is accomplished in a fair and equitable manner with as near a 50/50 mix of major political parties as possible in each district.

We’re not going to achieve very much by carrying signs in parades, gathering in protest groups, writing and/or calling our legislative representatives or using similar tactics to protest taxes, budget cuts, or other issues near and dear to our hearts. I think we’re wasting a lot of energy by focusing on those issues and not placing enough time and effort on monitoring and fighting for thoughtful and meaningful reapportionment.

The California State Senate and Assembly are dominated by members of the democrat party at a margin of about 5:3. It’s a bit less for the Assembly but the dominance of democrats in the Assembly is clearly visible. That’s a 25/15 split in the Senate and a 29/48 (there’s an Independent in this group) in the Assembly.

Realizing that we may rarely see a perfectly even distribution of political party representation in the California State Legislature, I believe we can do better than the current statistics on membership suggest.

What about career politicians? Well, term limits didn’t stop that. Between the Senate, with its two term limit for a total of eight years, and the Assembly with its three term limit for six years, a fourteen year career in California politics is still possible. The fringe benefits and retirement possibilities ain’t bad either.