Same as the Old Boss?

California's term limits are under a legal cloud in the federal courts. But what, if anything, has Prop. 140 changed in Sacramento?

Steven Hayward from the December 1997 issue

(Page 3 of 4)

The argument about inexperience has always struck many term limits supporters as a bad joke. As Lew Uhler, one of the sponsors of Prop. 140, puts it, "If you're having your safe cracked, would you rather have it done by a first-time amateur, or by a seasoned pro who has done it hundreds of times?" Mark Petracca, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied term limits closely, observes that the new legislators can hardly be considered totally inexperienced, because many of them have backgrounds on school boards, city councils, county boards of supervisors, and other local government bodies. But there are still a number of new members without much government experience at all. Is this in fact a bad thing, or perhaps a virtue of term limits?

Consider, for example, the case of Democrat Carl Washington, an African-American Baptist minister from Los Angeles. He replaced Assemblyman Willard Murray, who was a typical urban liberal and a product of the Democratic machine. Washington wears his innocence on his sleeve. A Republican staff person fell into conversation with Washington one day about the idea of school choice. Washington, intrigued, said, "Sounds like a good idea to me." When told that the California Teachers Association bitterly opposes school choice, Washington replied that it might be a problem for him as well, since the CTA had given him large campaign contributions. But he didn't rule it out.

Washington also made headlines when he voted in committee for a Republican tax cut bill against the wishes of the Democratic leadership. He allegedly said in the committee hearing that he didn't actually agree with the bill but that he voted for it because the bill's sponsor had voted for one of his (Washington's) bills. Open vote trading of this kind is a felony under California law--which is why "experienced" lawmakers have made logrolling an art form--so the attorney general opened an investigation of Washington. It turns out the official tape recording of the committee hearing is mysteriously blank at the moment of the comment in question. The attorney general recently concluded that there was insufficient evidence to warrant prosecution.

There are two ways of thinking about Washington's example. Opponents of term limits have made him their poster child for the pitfalls of inexperience, of which there are many other examples from this term. Others cite the refreshing openness to new (or old) ideas that Washington and other members like him display, along with an inclination to flout the old conventions that made the legislative process an insiders' domain. As one longtime lobbyist told me, "We're getting a refreshing honesty in the new people. They don't know what they're supposed to lie about yet."

The difference between the reliably liberal Murray and his "inexperienced" successor Washington would seem to tip the balance of the argument in favor of term limits for two reasons. In addition to the openness to new ideas, the established big government interests such as the teachers union and trial lawyers have to worry about re-establishing their influence with each new crop of legislators. The teachers union may well be able to keep Washington in line on school choice, but it is not automatic, as it was in the past. And in just a few years they will have to worry about Washington's successor.

"The influence of lobbyists was based on decades of ongoing personal relationships with legislators," says Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), the most libertarian-minded member of the legislature. (McClintock supported term limits in 1990 but is now having some second thoughts.) "Now the previously well-entrenched interests have to justify themselves to new people, who are strangers. And the new legislators are wary and will often say, 'Oh, you're a special interest lobbyist. I'm not sure I should talk to you.' "

So all lobbyists are finding they have to work a lot harder to establish trust and get their point of view across. A distinction seems to be emerging within Sacramento's "third house." Lobbyists for interests who depend on government favor rather than the market for economic gain, such as trial lawyers and the teachers union, generally hate term limits for the uncertainty turnover has introduced to their previously stable world. Meanwhile, lobbyists for various long-suffering conservative groups whose main mission is opposing government intervention, such as "pro-family" religious organizations and some business interests, are reveling at the new opportunity term limits have given them. "We love term limits," says Michael Bowman of the Capitol Resource Institute, a pro-family lobby. "Term limits have been very beneficial in opening up the process for citizens and for groups who had been shut out before." Many business lobbyists who had little access and even less success with the old Democrats in the legislature say that with term limits they not only have better access but are even listened to. "We have a shot with them now," one business lobbyist says.

With the apple cart upset for both legislators and lobbyists, the scene would seem to be set for staff and the bureaucracy to dominate. My own casual observations led me to think that staff was gaining power, simply because of all the familiar faces I first got to know 10 years ago who are still in senior positions in the Assembly, even though all the officeholders have turned over. Some had even come back to staff jobs after leaving for the private sector (as lobbyists) during the first staff shakeout that followed the passage of term limits in 1990. "Like moths to a flame," I would call out when I saw them back at their old desks.

But the statistics show that enormous staff turnover has accompanied the electoral turnover. As of June, according to the Assembly Rules Committee, 73 percent of current Assembly staff had been on the job for three years or less, and 45 percent had been employed for one year or less. In 1990, before term limits, only 23 percent had worked there less than a year. In 1990, there were more than 200 Assembly employees who had over 10 years' experience. Now there are only about 100 with 10 years' experience.

By all accounts, the new staff members seem as ill-equipped to deal with the legislative process as new legislators. Jim Knox, executive director of Common Cause's California chapter, complains, "I've encountered staff members who are not familiar with the basic timetables of moving legislation, what committees bills go to, what the deadlines are, and how to amend bills." Criticism of poor staff is not limited to good-government types with an allegiance to an activist state. Assemblyman McClintock, who served for 10 years in the Assembly before taking a hiatus and returning this year (he still has four years of eligibility left under his term limit), agrees with Knox: "I think the overall quality of staff work has deteriorated dramatically since I left here in 1992. The staff is turning over as fast as the legislators."

Bureaucratic staff, of course, has been unaffected in any way by term limits, and the attitude of the bureaucracy toward legislators, which resembled the attitude of a rebellious adolescent toward his parents even in the old days, has hardened. Bureaucrats know that legislators, and especially committee chairs, won't be around very long. "The attitude of the bureaucracy toward the legislature is condescending and uncooperative," says McClintock. "They are unresponsive to requests from the legislature and are almost disdainful of legislators."

If all of these impressions can be taken at face value, the score would seem to be 3-1 in favor of term limits: Term limit advocates win on competitive elections, more citizen-legislators, and a reduction in the power of special interests and staff. Term limit opponents may be right that the bureaucracy comes out stronger vis-à-vis short-term legislators.

But the bottom-line test for term limits will be whether term-limited legislators slow the growth of government and ultimately contribute to a reversal in its size. The early signs are not encouraging. Even this supposedly amateur legislature has managed to produce a law encouraging the state to sue the tobacco industry and intrusive legislation requiring business owners to allow breast-feeding on their property. A measure promoting the public paddling of juvenile offenders was high on the legislative agenda last year. A bill now heading for Wilson's desk will declare San Joaquin Valley dirt the official state soil.

This is arguably a slight improvement over the bill offered a few years ago that sought to make the banana slug the official state mollusk. And the legislature has shown a few signs of being slower to impose new regulation. But on the biggest issue of all--taxing and spending--the new legislature flunked. The surging California economy is swelling state coffers with a huge unanticipated surplus, the first in 10 years. Suddenly the revenue available to be spent jumped by $1.4 billion. Assembly Republicans issued a pro forma call for a tax rate cut, but soon dropped the idea and joined Democrats in voting to spend virtually every dime of the new revenue. Instead of a genuine reduction in taxes, at the 11th hour the legislature passed a so-called middle-class tax cut consisting of the same gimmicks, such as child tax credits, as the federal tax cut bill. (By contrast, in 1987, the last time the state had a large surge of revenue, Californians enjoyed a $400 million income tax rebate.) The tax credits don't take effect until next year, and they will do little to restrain the growth of state spending. California's budget has grown by nearly $10 billion over the past four years. This is the most sober portent for extending the example of California to Congress. We simply don't have any good evidence yet that frequent rotation will lead to a reduction of government.

My persistent doubts about term limits arise for precisely this reason, namely, that term limits don't get to the heart of what ails our political life. The heart of the problem is an administrative state that has corrupted the legislative function, forcing legislators to be glorified civil servants rather than deliberative lawmakers and rewarding them for increased spending and additional bureaucracy. To the extent that tenure in office aggravates this problem, term limits are worth keeping and perhaps extending to Congress, but they are no substitute for the changes in public opinion that would be necessary to shrink the size and scope of government.