ShareThisBy DAN WALTERS
Sacramento Bee
Thursday, May 10, 2007
California's legislative term limits have been a mixed blessing at best. A cogent argument can be made for changing them to allow lawmakers to serve longer in one legislative house, rather than jumping back and forth.
Why, then, would legislative leaders and business and labor groups promoting a term limit overhaul mislead voters about what their ballot measure would do? Even more important, why would Attorney General Jerry Brown go along with that trickery by writing an official summary of the measure that echoes the misleading propaganda?
Voters, apparently disgusted by a corruption scandal in the Capitol, enacted term limits in 1990, restricting legislators to three two-year terms in the Assembly and two four-year terms in the Senate, for a maximum of 14 years in legislative office.
Many legislators and interest groups have yearned to change the law, but voters turned down a modification in 2002. The possibility of change arose again this year as a possible tradeoff for the redistricting reform that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has sought, with the added urgency that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata both would be "termed out" next year.
A business-labor-political coalition with ties to Nunez drafted a ballot measure, reducing the maximum service to 12 years and allowing someone to serve all 12 years in one house, with a special provision allowing Perata to serve an additional four-year term in the Senate. But to help Nunez and Perata remain in office, the measure would have to gain voter approval by early next year _ one reason Schwarzenegger and legislators created a Feb. 5 presidential primary.
An initiative measure must be submitted to the attorney general for an official "title and summary" that goes onto the ballot. In this case, Brown's summary reads: "Reduces the total amount of time a person may serve in the state Legislature from 14 years to 12 years. Provides a transition period to allow current members to serve a total of 12 consecutive years in the house in which they are currently serving."
Someone reading that summary might conclude that the measure tightens up term limits, rather than loosening them. U.S. Term Limits, the national pro-term limits organization, pointed out Tuesday that Brown's summary virtually plagiarizes the campaign organization's self-serving description.
The campaign's Web site describes the measure this way: "Reduces the total time a member can serve from 14 to 12 years," and adds: "To provide a fair and equitable transition to new reduced terms, the current members of the Legislature would be able to serve a total of 12 years in the house in which they currently serve, including all previous service in that body."
U.S. Term Limits, which has sued over the summary wording, describes the similarities as a "smoking gun" that may prove collusion. Brown's office insists that its summary was fairly written and "explains what this measure is about."
This is not mere semantics. When the Public Policy Institute of California conducted a poll in March on the issue, it described the current law and asked poll respondents whether they'd support or oppose "a change in term limits that would allow members to serve up to 12 years of total legislative service in either house." The response was overwhelmingly (66 percent) negative. But when the Field Poll asked its respondents about the measure, stressing the reduction in total service from 14 to 12 years, there was a positive (54 percent) response.
The bottom line: Rather than make the logical case for softening term limits, the campaign wants to trick voters into thinking that they are tightening up limits. Jerry Brown is abetting that strategy.
(Contact Dan Walters at dwalters(at)sacbee.com. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/walters.)
(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
