The constitutional amendment establishing term limits in Michigan was passed overwhelmingly in November, 1992, on the same day Bill Clinton beat incumbent President George H.W. Bush, the last sitting president not to be re-elected.
But here’s something most people don’t remember about what really happened with term limits. The amendment as written applied not just to the legislature and state office holders, but to congressmen as well. I think many people voted for term limits because they thought they could get rid of long-time national figures they didn’t like.
“We are finally going to be able to get rid of John Conyers,” one man told me that fall. Well, while I am not a lawyer, I knew that the only way we could change the rules for electing congressmen was to amend the United States Constitution.
Sure enough, the federal courts threw out term limits as they applied to congressmen, but let the part affecting Michigan officials stand. And our government has been worse as a result.
Here’s why term limits are such a failure. Imagine you were told you could have a job for six or eight years, and after that you could never have it again. First of all, would you leave the job you have now to take it? Probably not.
That’s what you would have to do to be in the legislature. But imagine that you did so anyway, and you weren’t rich or already retired. Let’s say you were in your last year.
You know you are going to need a new job in a few months. Is your mind going to be on serving the people, or finding your next job? What if you knew that if you voted a certain way, you might well get a job as a lobbyist or with some interest group when you are done?
There was one lawmaker a few years ago who did all he could to prevent a new bridge from being built across the Detroit River. As soon as he left government, he went to work for the company that owns the Ambassador Bridge, the force that wanted to block a new one.
In other places, that would be illegal. In Michigan, it’s business as usual. Term limits have had other bad effects. Lawmakers can’t stay long enough to learn their jobs, or to get to build real relationships, which is how good legislation gets made.
Instead, when lawmakers now have a choice between making the hard choices needed to solve a problem, or doing something cosmetic to delay things blowing up for a decade, they tend to take the easy way out. After all, they will be gone then. If you want proof, just look at our roads. Getting rid of term limits, or even modifying them, will be hard.
Special interests love term limits, because they give them much more power and control. They have, and will, spend heavily to convince voters that term limits mean good government.
We have to overcome that. Ending gerrymandering would help, because at least we’d have more competitive districts that are apt to be more responsive to the people. We will get a chance to do that when we vote this fall.
But term limits the way we now have them means we are doomed to have a legislature with too little experience and too many disincentives to represent us well.
We need to fix this, or we’ll go on getting more of the same.
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