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 4 of 4)

And we have not yet seen enough to know what unintended consequences might come with term limits in the long run. The forces of big government are irrepressible and may eventually prove adaptable to a term-limited environment. Californians have seen this before with reforms such as Proposition 13, a great blow for low taxes which nonetheless did not provide a lasting bulwark against expanding centralized government in California (and which in some ways made things worse; see "Pushing the Limit," November 1993).

Hence the most interesting question about term limits, and their final test, will be how term-limited legislatures adapt to the loss of "experience" and institutional memory. Term limit opponents are way too hasty in declaring victory on the issue of experience, because the place of experience in our political life is far from settled. You needn't believe that gridlock is good to divine a silver lining to the supposedly sorry circumstance of rookie legislators and staff who don't know how to work the process and meet the calendar.

"One good thing that term limits might do is force a debate about the level of complexity in our legislative institutions," says U.C.-Irvine's Mark Petracca. "Does the claim that issues are complex necessitate the kind of experience that can only be gained through long tenure in office? Or is it our complex institutional design that currently requires experience? I am suspicious about whether the complexity of the current legislative process was designed by the people who have been there for the last 30 years so that it is impenetrable to outsiders." Institutional complexity, Petracca notes, serves the interests of long-tenured officeholders, who can then market themselves to voters and special interests not only as indispensable to the legislative process but also as necessary ombudsmen for dealing with the administrative state they have conspired to extend. But it is not obvious that the process of legislating is inherently complex; the current complexity, Petracca suggests, is probably more a deliberate product.

Petracca thinks term-limited legislators eventually will change the legislative process to make it simpler and more accessible. "How much experience is necessary to redesign the legislative process in a way that is comportable to the characteristics of term-limited legislators?" he asks. The ability of less-experienced citizen-legislators to adapt to the legislative process will be an excellent case study of whether government has grown beyond the capacity of ordinary citizens to understand and reform. It will show whether democracy has diminished to the point where elections are merely ancillary to government, or whether elections are still at the heart of our democracy. For this reason alone--and no matter what the courts say about the constitutionality of Prop. 140--the experiment should be allowed to continue. (If the courts strike down Prop. 140, term limits advocates have prepared new initiatives they believe will withstand any further constitutional challenges.)

Meanwhile, Willie Brown, the career politician who helped spawn term limits, is having the time of his life as mayor of San Francisco. Democrats are back in control of the legislature, and spending is unrestrained. Was it all worth it, just to get rid of Willie Brown and exact revenge on the political class? The liberal machine in Sacramento sorely misses him, which suggests that the answer is yes.

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