California has adopted some truly loony measures through the initiative process, not the least loony of which was Prop. 13, the measure that sets property taxes at sharply different levels for houses in the same neighborhoods depending on when they were last sold. But by far the worst such measure was the term limits law limiting members of the Assembly to six years in office and senators to eight.
The main effect of term limits was to make the executive branch stronger, as well as to amp-up the power of un-elected lobbyists and staffers. With so much riding on the governor, we can’t afford to have a slacker like Davis on the throne when the state’s in trouble, hence the recall.
Recognition that term limits have hurt us is not a partisan issue, as my friend Ray Haynes explained to the Chronicle reporter Mark Martin:
Lack of leadership in the Assembly is so bad that one of the most conservative members of the Legislature, Assemblyman Ray Haynes, R-Riverside, longs for the days when San Francisco liberal Willie Brown ruled the Assembly as the always-in-charge speaker.
“Today the Assembly is out of control,” Haynes wrote in an opinion piece for the North County Times in Escondido (San Diego County) in which he noted how much better the Assembly ran when Brown was in charge. “It is in serious need of adult supervision.”
When Ray Haynes is publicly yearning for the return of the Ayatollah of the Assembly, you have to know things are bad. But the trouble is that term limits remain popular with the political outsiders who make up the vast majority of the electorate, because of their low confidence in politicians generally and the dearth of good news coverage of state government.
If I had my way, we’d recall term limits right after we recall The Invisible Gray.
Link via Rough and Tumble.