Transcending term limits.

• Author: Peery, George
• Position: State legislators

In nearly half the states, legislators are trying to adjust to the restraints produced by term limits.

Exit pollster: "Who did you vote for?" Middle-aged businessman: "I'm not going to tell you who I voted for, but I think that every so often we ought to take all the sonsabitches out and shoot them."

Not liking your legislators is as American as apple pie. But term limits are the modern equivalent of "taking them all out."

Recently both the U.S. Congress and state legislatures have been in the cross hairs of voters' gun sights. Citizens in nearly half the states approved term limits for federal and state officials. But following a Supreme Court decision in May of 1995 that struck down limits on the Congress, term limits are principally a state phenomenon.

As with other "state matters" that are frequently overshadowed by media attention on national issues, term limits and their impact in states are indeed worth watching. What happens with limits in states is likely to set the stage for future arguments about extending them to Congress.

Last fall Louisiana became the latest state choosing "to shoot 'em." In February the Nebraska Supreme Court struck down the limits Cornhuskers had imposed on their legislators. Currently 20 states limit the terms their lawmakers may serve. From isolated beginnings (1990 in California, Oklahoma and Colorado) term limits have blanketed every region of the country. Voters in a wide variety of states have adopted limitations. Ceilings restrict legislative service in states where 42 percent of all American citizens live. Of the nation's 7,424 legislators, 2,552 (about 34 percent) of them are now under term limits.

To the list that usefully distinguishes one state from another - large/small, industrial/agricultural, culturally diverse/homogeneous, northern/southern, western/eastern, initiative/non-initiative - we must now add: limits/no limits.

The clocks on term limits have started. But the differences between the states, their various provisions, the sequencing of these limits, different implementation dates, all render their ticking out of synch.

Proponents claim term limits will lead to genuine reform. Detractors say limits are political and partisan gimmicks that will change nothing of importance. Whatever the final outcome, however, term limits represent an important experiment in the way Americans govern themselves.

To date, no state legislature has been completely repopulated, or "termed out," as a consequence of limits. But there will soon be a time when entire bodies will have members with no more than six years' experience. The lower houses in Maine and California are likely to be the first to experience this change. The houses in Arkansas, Colorado, Michigan, Montana, Oregon and Washington and the California Senate follow after the 1998 elections. But this is just the beginning. If no new states adopt term limits, an unlikely prospect, by 2008 limits will be fully implemented in all states that have passed them.

What will be the effects of term limits in the states? How will they change the ways legislatures work? Will term limited candidates and term limited legislatures operate differently from those that are not? The answers to these questions will be based, among other things, on how candidates are recruited, who gets elected and how the body elects its leadership.

TERM LIMITS AND TURNOVER

Over the last three decades, state legislatures have modernized and progressed. The '70s and '80s witnessed movements championing professionalism, greater staff support and more time for legislating. Salaries were increased, offices were provided, the job of legislator was made more attractive. During this era, state governments became more significant players in the administration of federal government policies. States delivered the money, wrote the contracts, hired more people and, in varying degrees, accepted the constraints of ever-expanding national programs.

State legislatures, notoriously amateur institutions in the earlier decades of this century, purposely professionalized themselves. Immediate evidence of this was a decrease in member turnover rates. (Studies documenting the institutionalization of the U.S. Congress have universally pointed to decreased turnover as an essential ingredient of the process.)

Traditionally, electoral turnover has been higher in state legislatures than in Congress. Turnover from one session to the next in state lower houses was about 50 percent in the 1930s. The 1960s and '70s witnessed a reduction to about a third. That decreased to 25 percent in the early 1980s, and then dropped at the end of the decade to the lower 20s. Houses thus began to demonstrate greater continuity from one election to another. Senate figures show a similar pattern, although they are less comparable than house figures because of their smaller size and slightly different electoral cycles. While there remain wildly varying ranges of turnover between states, what is notable is that since the 1960s there has been a decrease in the turnover rates in almost all chambers and almost all states.

In limiting the number of years or sessions a lawmaker can serve, term limits strike at one of the central tenets of what it means to be a modern legislative institution - stable membership.

But term limits are not all the same. And state legislatures are not all the same. The effects that term limits are likely to have in limited states will...