More Evidence Against Term Limits

by Jack Lessenberry
March 12, 2010

Ninety years ago, the famously irreverent journalist H.L. Mencken said that there is a simple “solution to any human problem that is neat, plausible — and wrong.”

Nearly two decades ago, Michigan voters thought they’d found the way to fix the “mess” in Lansing: term limits.

They’d make sure they got the bums out, regardless of whether the voters were willing to throw them out. So Michigan voters overwhelmingly passed a term-limits constitutional amendment in 1992 that dramatically changed state government.

It works this way. You can serve up to three two-year terms in the Michigan House of Representatives. You can serve two four-year terms in the Michigan Senate. You can serve two four-year terms in any statewide office, like governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state or attorney general. And then you are banished — for life.

What this was supposed to do was take much of the politics out of governing. Voters had an image of corrupt machine politicians staying in office forever, feathering their nests, preventing reform.

So they ended that.

Unfortunately, what they got instead was worse. In many aspects, much worse — as a new study conclusively shows.

Today, Michigan has a legislature full of politicians who haven’t had time to learn their jobs. There are no old-timers to take them under their wings and mentor them. Today’s lawmakers haven’t had time to build up good working relationships with fellow legislators in their own party caucus — let alone on the other side.

They have to scramble to keep jobs that are temporary at best, and for their last two years, their minds are frequently not on this job, but on finding their next job. Term-limited House members run for the Senate; senators run for the House; others seek positions with the special interests who seek to influence them.

Lawmakers sometimes quit in the middle of the term to take a secure job, often leaving their constituents unrepresented for months. (State Rep. Tim Moore, (R-Farwell) is apparently about to resign to become an elementary school principal, for example.)

The effects of this are stunningly visible to anyone who has followed or covered the legislature for very long. But now, there is solid, scientific new evidence of what a disaster term limits have been. Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson, a professor of political science at Wayne State University, has led a team of researchers who have been monitoring term limits since they took effect in 1998. In an article in Legislative Studies Quarterly, they present clear and dramatic proof that lawmakers spend far less time monitoring state agencies than was the case before.

Shockingly, “this research shows that many legislators elected after term limits don’t even realize this is part of their job.” Many said things like this is “not our job. It’s the governor’s job.”

Even if lawmakers do take their oversight responsibilities seriously, they are apt to be less effective. Why? In the old days, lawmakers had years to build up relationships and trust with members of the permanent civil service.

Those who knew about corruption and wanted to stop it — so-called whistleblowers — were far more likely to confide in a lawmaker they had known for a long time. “Term limits severed long-term relationships between veteran legislators and members of the bureaucracies that those legislators and their committees oversaw.”

Would-be “whistle-blowers are unlikely to reveal what they know to legislators, even if legislators know who to ask,” their article concluded, adding that most lawmakers likely don’t even know.

Significantly, one lawmaker elected after term limits began reported hearing a bureaucrat say, “We were here when you got here, and we will be here when you are gone.”

The researchers did find people eager to take the new lawmakers under their wings and “help” them understand how they should vote — agents of special interest groups.

This may now matter more than ever, since the federal government has been passing on programs to the states, “and the large sums of money that Congress passes through to state governments suggest that state-level accountability is increasingly important.’

But in Michigan, there is less and less of that. In a 2005 book, Political and Institutional Effects of Term Limits, Sarbaugh-Thompson showed that Michigan’s term limits law had produced a system in which career politicians play musical chairs, serving in a succession of jobs they never completely understand.

Her research has led her to conclude that extending term limits might help ease the problem. Or, on the other hand, voters could decide to return to the system of term limits devised by the founding fathers, which was designed to allow voters to keep those in power who were good at government, and get rid of the rest.

That system is called regular elections. As with Prohibition, the evidence seems conclusive that the great experiment hasn’t worked. It might be time to give the traditional method another try.

Veteran journalist and national Emmy Award winner Jack Lessenberry teaches at Wayne State University, serves as Michigan Radio’s senior political analyst and writes regularly for several publications. He also serves as The Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman and is host of the weekly television show Deadline Now on WGTE-TV in Toledo.