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Columnist: Term limits — the Maine Legislature doesn’t need them

By Tyler Francke

Posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009, 12:24 am

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California governor and body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger made headlines this week by bringing up the issue of political term limits once again. When Arnie campaigned during the state recall in 2003, he said: “My campaign for governor is based on the concept that California’s state government belongs to the people, not the career politicians. … That is why I believe in citizen legislators and yes, even citizen governors. It is also why I am such a strong believer in term limits.”

However, his position appears to have reversed in recent years. In 2008, he endorsed Proposition 93, a ballot measure — defeated by voters — that would have lengthened term limits in the Golden State. Furthermore, in a recent speech, he said term limits force experienced people out of office and even went so far as to call the California system, which confines governors to two terms in their lifetime, “crazy.” Perhaps the dramatic change of heart is due to Schwarzenegger’s realization that, come 2011, he won’t be back.

Speaking of crazy, despite the fact that the Governator’s opinion is clearly motivated only by his desire to stay in office, I think he might be right. Sort of.

In the executive branch of federal and state governments, where a great deal of power is in the hands of a single person, term limits are a very good idea. Incumbents in the United States are notoriously difficult to unseat, and without mandatory turnover in executive offices, many states — and perhaps our nation as well — could effectively be made into a dictatorship.

But should all political offices, federal and state, be bound by term limits? Philip Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, a Virginia-based nonprofit, thinks so. He believes term limits are one of the few checks to control corruption and wants restrictions placed on all politicians, big and small. But Blumel is a financial planner, not a politician. His only political involvement has been signature gathering and running campaigns to limit terms of city commissioners in Florida — successful campaigns, at that.

I wonder if Blumel would change his tune if he ever got elected to a state Legislature. The orientation process for a new congressman is lengthy and overwhelming, according to Teresa Hayes, D-Buckfield. Hayes has been a member of the Maine House of Representatives for three years and she is still learning new things every day. The amount of knowledge required to be effective and confident is “mind-boggling,” and Hayes said that learning the ropes in even a small Legislature like ours is like “grad school without a syllabus.”

Term limits for the Maine Legislature were passed as a citizens’ initiative in 1993, on the heels of an election scandal that created distrust of long-serving representatives. The scandal had indicated abuse of power by entrenched representatives who had held leadership positions for a decade or more. But the term limit law was overkill. What was needed was a restriction on leadership by legislators, not their ability to serve at all.

Beverly Daggett, Maine’s first female Senate president, has also noted the negative consequences term limits have had. In a 2005 article for Spectrum, she explained that term limits deliver “fresh ideas” into the arena at the cost of institutional memory and wisdom. According to Daggett, the most experienced and knowledgeable people in Augusta now are often the lobbyists and special interest groups, which makes it easier for them to take advantage of the people who actually make the laws.

The Maine Legislature, where power is distributed among 188 people, is not like the executive and doesn’t carry the same risks. Leadership within the Legislature should be controlled more, but to impose restrictions on all legislators is to limit no one but the voters – making it so the most experienced person for the job is the one person who is unavailable. There are many areas in our society in need of reform and rehabilitation in the coming decades, and we must have legislators who can think beyond the next eight years. Our law-makers do not require a fresh perspective more than the wisdom of what has worked in the past and the experience and confidence to do what needs to be done to make things better in the future.

Tyler Francke is not a political science student.