Voters May Be Asked to Ease L.A. Term Limits

The tang of the Los Angeles riots still hung in the air 13 years ago when city voters adopted term limits for elected leaders. Since then, the rules have upended city politics and subtly but profoundly altered power in the nation’s second-largest metropolis.

Now, two influential Los Angeles civic groups are arguing that the limits have done more harm than good. If they get their way, a measure to extend the tenure of Los Angeles officials from two terms to three will appear on the ballot this fall.

That would give voters the chance to reconsider an idea that has enlivened local politics, created a whirlwind of office-shuffling and -- some contend -- elevated the power of bureaucrats and lobbyists.

The push for reform is coming from the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters, a formidable combination of civic and business leaders who have experience shaping arguments and raising money for campaigns.

Armed with a privately commissioned poll suggesting that voters might be open to their idea, the groups plan to ask the City Council to place a referendum on the November ballot. A third group, the Los Angeles Civic Alliance, may also join the partnership. With members who include former Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher and Elise Buik, president and chief executive of United Way of Greater Los Angeles, the alliance would add heft to the effort.

The council is expected to comply with the request. Seven of its 15 members are scheduled to leave the council in 2009 because of term limits in 2009; five more would have to leave in 2011.

“Whether it is the airport or the ports or the Wilshire Corridor, the difficulty of getting things done requires a good deal of time and a sustained commitment to a vision,” said George Kieffer, a partner at the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips law firm and a key player in the Civic Alliance. “That’s more and more difficult to do with people looking at short-term horizons and other offices.”

It was 1992 when Los Angeles took up the issue of term limits in earnest, only months after the verdicts in the Rodney King police beating case triggered devastating riots. Voters were in a surly mood, unhappy with leaders who had presided over that calamity.

Then-Mayor Tom Bradley tied himself in knots trying to support the idea while continuing to hold open the possibility of running for reelection -- for a sixth term. The City Council split, substituted its own motions for those being forced on it and ultimately acquiesced to a ballot measure.

And from that whipsawing by the incumbent class emerged a theretofore important but secondary political player. Richard Riordan, referred to in those days as “an influential downtown lawyer,” aggressively championed term limits, rode them to public prominence and was elected mayor.

Voters approved the limits in April 1993. Under the restrictions, no elected city official may serve more than two four-year terms.

Since then, the effects of term limits have roiled their way across city politics in ways both predictable and not. One conspicuous example has been the impact on the City Council and its shifting relationship with the mayor, whose office has gained power thanks to term limits and the 1999 City Charter reform.

That has happened because council members with little time to make a mark of their own find that it behooves them to ally themselves with a mayor, even in areas where they may have reservations.

In May, for example, the council voted 14 to 0 to approve Villaraigosa’s plan to increase trash fees to raise money to hire more police officers.

In some ways, that reflects common values. Most members of the council and the mayor support police, environmental protection, workers and the balance of a predominantly liberal-labor agenda.

But it also shows how a dominant mayor can set the agenda -- especially when confronted with a council weakened by high turnover.

It is nearly impossible to imagine the council as it stood in 1992 bowing to the mayor on a substantial fee hike after just cursory debate. Among the forceful voices on that council were John Ferraro, Ernani Bernardi, Marvin Braude and Joel Wachs -- each of whom had been in office for more than 20 years -- and other long-timers, including Zev Yaroslavsky, now a county supervisor, and Hal Bernson.

With seven years of council service under his belt, Richard Alatorre was a relative newcomer in 1992. He opposed Riordan on term limits then and believes experience has borne him out.

“There’s a vacuum of leadership, a bureaucracy running the city,” Alatorre said.

Echoing that point is Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, who is pushing a program to vastly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in his city. Nickels doesn’t face term limits, a factor he said is important to his agenda.

“As a mayor, you have to scare the bureaucracy into thinking you’ll be there forever; otherwise, they’ll think they can wait you out,” Nickels said.

Raphael Sonenshein, a historian of modern Los Angeles, is less dismissive of local term limits. He argues, for instance, that they have helped open up the City Council. But he too notes that they have had profound and in some ways unanticipated consequences.

Billed as a way to clip the wings of career politicians, term limits have been more successful at encouraging ingenuity, as officials move through offices rather than settle in one. Today’s City Council includes two former state legislators, Tony Cardenas and Herb Wesson, who cycled to the council when state term limits ended their Sacramento jobs.

And Villaraigosa himself is a former speaker of the state Assembly, chased back to Los Angeles by those same limits.

Another member of the council, Alex Padilla, began to pursue his next job only weeks after being reelected to the council last year, when he announced his candidacy in the Democratic primary race for the state Senate’s 20th District seat.

On election day earlier this month:

* Padilla won the Democratic nomination over Cindy Montanez to replace Richard Alarcon in the state Senate.

* An unopposed Alarcon won his primary to replace Montanez in the 39th Assembly District.

* And Montanez declared her candidacy to replace Padilla on the City Council.

That shuffle is evidence that politicians generally do not, even with term limits, work in government for a brief stint and then return to private life.

“The most skilled people figure out the rules,” Sonenshein said. “It doesn’t eliminate political careers, it just changes them.”

In some ways, that revolving door serves Los Angeles well, Sonenshein argues, by forging closer ties to state government. That suggests to some that the answer to the problems of term limits is not undoing them but reconsidering their length, possibly making council members eligible for a third four-year term.

Still being debated is whether the Chamber of Commerce and League of Women Voters proposal would include the citywide offices of mayor, controller and city attorney.

Beyond the current debate in Los Angeles is another term-limit target: Many political operatives would like to find a way to lengthen the service of state Assembly members and senators. If the Los Angeles measure succeeds, some expect the next step to be a similar proposal to address the state’s limits.

When Los Angeles voters first considered term limits, one warning by opponents was that their imposition would shift power from elected officials to lobbyists.

Lobbyists have the time and financial incentive to develop a thorough knowledge of complex subjects. Elected officials, because they are temporary, often have less expertise.

Joe Cerrell is a campaign consultant and city lobbyist who has been at that job for 48 years. Last Wednesday, his first meeting was with an official who had been reelected less than 12 hours earlier. The official -- Cerrell would not say who -- sought his strategic advice about his next move once his term expires.

“I think I do better and know more about the system than these people being elected,” Cerrell said.

One other aspect of the limits, critics and advocates agree, is that they have tended to bind officials more closely to their core constituencies. A council member elected as an environmentalist would find it difficult to defy that community, knowing that he or she will need that support for a reelection bid or pursuit of another office.

Take the case of Councilwoman Ruth Galanter. She won her office in 1987 and held it for 16 years, until term limits intervened. She ran as a strong environmentalist and succeeded in fending off Riordan’s plans for airport expansion, but she also dismayed some of her backers by championing the Playa Vista development along the Ballona Wetlands.

Supporters accused her of betrayal, but Galanter worked a compromise that preserved part of the wetlands while allowing development to go forward.

The length, complexity and political difficulty of the deal would have been challenging for a term-limited council member, Galanter and others agree.

Whether that’s good or bad depends on what one thinks of Playa Vista: Those who like it see Galanter as brave; those who oppose it view Galanter as someone who lost a sense of accountability.

Galanter harbors no doubts. Term limits, she says, have discouraged genuine leaders from seeking office and have sapped the council’s will to take on complex or controversial issues.

“There’s a strong disincentive to have any strong principles or positions,” she said.

Wesson, a member of the current council, agrees. “When you have more time, it thickens one’s backbone and breeds courage,” he said. “You have to have courage to go against communities.”

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, agrees that term limits have helped break ossification in certain positions. “It is a problem when you have people who sit in office 30 or 40 years.”

But the trade-off of the current limits, he adds, has proven to be too much. “It doesn’t allow people to think long-term,” he said.

Once, it was Riordan who led the questioning of that premise and Galanter who fought the losing effort against Riordan’s proposal for cleaning house at City Hall. Now, they’re at least partly in agreement. He believes the limits were too strict; she argues they were just plain wrong -- and that they were cynically motivated by Riordan’s desire to build a name for himself.

Riordan, the founder of Los Angeles term limits and the first mayor removed from office by them, declined to debate the merits but admitted he may have gone too far.

“Only a mediocre person never makes a mistake,” the former mayor acknowledged. “I think there should be a better balance, and certainly on the City Council I’d support an amendment to extend the limit to 12 years.”

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Term limits

City of Los Angeles: Two four-year terms for all elected offices, including controller, city attorney, mayor and City Council members. Passed in 1993.

Los Angeles County: Three four-year terms for the Board of Supervisors. Passed in 2002; took effect with terms beginning in 2004, allowing two supervisors to serve until 2014, and three to serve until 2016.

State Assembly: Three two-year terms. Passed in 1990; took effect in 1996.

State Senate: Two four-year terms. Passed in 1990; took effect in 1998.