So much to do, so little time.

• Author: Levinson, Arlene
• Position: State term limits - Includes related article onthe US Supreme Court decision on congressional term limits

The voters love the idea, so 20 states now have term limits on their state legislators. Some of the consequences are beginning to show up.

Chuck Perricone, Kalamazoo's state representative of less than four months, can't sleep at night. He worries about votes he cast the day before, the politicking he plans tomorrow.

Term limits give him just six years to learn the ropes and reach the top.

"I don't have much time," lamented the former accountant, an earnest, 34-year-old Republican. "This is like you're taking an exam, and that's the pressure every day. It never goes away because you know the instructors will be gone in four years."

Term limits, the popular '90s cure for unwanted incumbency, are electrifying life under the wedding-cake dome of Michigan's Statehouse. Although only one of 20 states that now limit longevity for their state lawmakers, Michigan is among those that will take effect the soonest.

Michigan voters set the clock ticking in the electronics of 1992 with a six-year maximum for house seats, eight in the Senate. Its U.S. House members get three terms, U.S. senators, two.

By 1999, no one in the House will have served more than four years; for years later, the same will be true of the state Senate. So although the pre-term limits generation still makes up more than half of Michigan's 148-member Legislature, change is apparent.

Some among the newly elected are job hunting - as lobbyists. Longtimers, feeling redundant, are departing early. Less time is spent getting to know colleagues, oiling the wheels of democratic compromise.

A few say it's ore fun. But nearly all, even term limits supporters, agree Michigan's limits are too limited for lawmakers to learn the work and be effective.

Many worry, like Perricone - just arrived and already angling for a leadership job - how they will run the place without veterans to guide them. And there are indications that lobbyists have more influence, just as term limit opponents warned.

Other term limit states are seeing similar effects. California legislators bailing out for other jobs are setting off chain reactions of special elections. Assembly and Senate vacancies for next year number 36 at last count, four times the number before limits.

And in Maine's House of Representatives, where turnover doubled to 50 percent partly because of the GOP sweep, committees have more difficulty reaching consensus. It's estimated that 20 percent of bills may reach the House floor this year recommending...