by Karl Kurtz
Amid all the hoopla about super-dooper Tuesday next week, there is an important legislative institutional change on the ballot in California. Proposition 93 would change the state's current lifetime term limits of six years in the Assembly and eight years in the Senate to a total of 12 years, regardless of the chamber in which a member serves.
From an institutional perspective and based on the research that we have done on term limits, this is a change that makes sense. It would mitigate one of the more negative effects of term limits: the tendency of senates to become the more experienced body and therefore dominant over the houses of representatives (or assemblies). In California, for example, since term limits have taken effect, consistently over 90% of the members of the Senate have previously served in the Assembly. Almost all Assembly leaders and committee chairs, on the other hand, have little or no previous legislative experience.
The 12-year total limit would give members who want to get things done in the legislature an incentive to build their career in one chamber or the other, thereby removing the Senate's experience advantage over the Assembly.
But regardless of whether or not this is a good idea or a bad one, it drives me nuts that much of the opposition to Proposition 93 is based on the fact that approval would mean that Speaker Fabian Núñez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata would be eligible to continue in their current offices instead of being term-limited. For example, see this report from the Sacramento Bee:
Opponents paint Proposition 93 as a thinly veiled scheme by Núñez and Perata to save their jobs. Retaining the status quo is senseless and self-defeating, they claim.
"This is a Legislature whose leadership has repeatedly broken its promises and failed to deliver results on a wide range of issues," said Kevin Spillane, spokesman for No on 93.
The attacks on these leaders are very personal and are reminiscent of some of the original 1990s campaigns in favor of term limits that made bogey-men of Speaker Willie Brown in California, Speaker Vernal Riffe in Ohio and Speaker John Martin in Maine.
Admittedly, the fact that Speaker Núñez and Senator Perata are behind the initiative, that they have raised money for it, and that the proposition is not prospective so that it would not apply to them encourages this line of opposition.
But, say what you will on either side of this proposition, it is a potentially important institutional change in California state government. It should be fought out on the basis of what's good for the state in 20 or 40 years (when the current speaker and president pro tem will be long gone), not in a two or four year perspective.
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