Time's up! (term limits for members of the Michigan Legislature) (includes related articles)

• Author: Bell, Dawson

Let the experiment begin as the Michigan Legislature says farewell to experience.

In 1975, David Hollister was a 33-year-old first termer in the Michigan House of Representatives when he watched in helpless frustration as his grandfather struggled in vain to end unwanted life support after two strokes.

In 1990, with 15 years of experience, acumen and clout under his belt, Hollister finally persuaded his fellow lawmakers that the state of Michigan needed to authorize the living will. Today, citizens of this state can execute documents that instruct hospitals and physicians to end extraordinary treatment in the event they are struck by serious injury or illness.

But what if Representative Hollister (mayor of the city of Lansing since 1993) had been shown the door after six years? What if the 1992 voter-enacted limits on the terms of House members had been in effect two decades earlier? The short answer is: Nobody knows.

Certainly, the grassroots term limits movement that swept Michigan and the rest of the country in the early 1990s wasn't aimed at maintaining feeding tubes in the terminally ill. Backers of the Michigan proposal almost never cited specific legislation in their campaign to change the state's constitution. Rather, their message was: These people have been hanging around too long. They don't represent you anymore. They don't understand how you live. Voters responded to the message; the amendment was approved (58 percent to 42 percent). And in 1998, 64 members of the House are ineligible to run again. Members of the Senate who were in the middle of a term in 1992 may run for one more four-year term this year. But by 2002, maximum experience in the Michigan Legislature will be measurable on the fingers of two hands (thumbs don't count).

Without question, the impact on the class photographs will be dramatic. But as the reality sets in, policymakers and policy activists also are beginning to wonder what happens to the hard questions.

"It took me 16 years to get that bill enacted," says Hollister. "It was a process of public education, he says. "If you have a six-year limit, I just don't see how people can dig in, learn the details, develop a sophisticated understanding of the players and build the coalition you need to get it passed. You need a champion."

Clearly, what made the difference in the effort to enact a living will statute was Hollister's tenacity. Session after session he introduced legislation, organized the advocates for action, negotiated with the opposition and accumulated the kind of political chits that ultimately translated into votes.

Similarly, former Representative and Senator Nick Smith, a Republican from southern Michigan, made a habit of marking the opening of each new session (he was elected to the House twice and the Senate three times) with a proposal to repeal Michigan's inheritance tax. In the 1980s, with opposition from a Democratic governor and a Democratically controlled House, he never made much progress. But it is difficult to calculate the psychological impact of Smith's seemingly endless crusade.

In 1995, the political dynamic changed, the Legislature passed and the governor signed a bill to phase out the inheritance tax. A credible argument can be made that it never would have happened without Smith's persistence. But, in fact, it did happen without his presence. Smith left the Michigan Legislature in 1992 after a successful bid for Congress.

Perhaps even more difficult to measure is the impact term limits will have on broader, sweepingly complex issues like education reform and tax policy. Here, too, the Michigan experience may be instructive.

UNDERSTANDING THE SYSTEM

In 1993, Michigan state government figuratively leapt off the cliff in the quest to change public education and finance.

After nearly two decades of rising taxpayer dissatisfaction with both the property tax burden of paying for K-12 education and the performance of the schools they were paying for, the Michigan Legislature took about 48 hours to demolish the status quo.

It started innocently enough as a partisan bidding war between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate over property tax relief. Michigan Republicans had been running for office and attempting to legislate for years as the enemy of property taxes. Democrats had been countering with proposals to offset property tax cuts with increases in other taxes. A variety of tax-cutting ballot proposals had been dutifully offered to the electorate and, with one exception (a tax-limiting plan that was adopted in 1978 but widely viewed as ineffective by the 1990s), defeated.

Governor John Engler, elected in large part on a promise to enact substantial property tax relief, put one on the ballot in 1992. It won the support of 41 percent of the electorate.

As recently as a month and a half earlier in June 1993, a complicated, bipartisan proposal to cut property taxes and raise the state sales tax had been presented to the voters and was convincingly quashed (54 percent to 46 percent). War-weary lawmakers were saying they didn't know which way to turn.

But as Senate Republicans mustered for one more sortie into 20 percent...