PERSPECTIVE ON TERM LIMITATIONS : Tell Sacramento That’s the Limit : With new blood in the Legislature, Californians could restore the state’s good-government reputation.

This November voters will have the opportunity to limit the terms of their state officials and to cut the costs of the state Legislature. They can do this by voting for Proposition 140.

In 1990, according to the California Journal, “state legislatures around the country are starting to echo a common theme: Don’t become like California’s Legislature.” It is a dramatic reversal from 1970 when California’s Legislature was rated the nation’s best by the National Council of Legislatures.

The Legislature draws equally bleak reviews from its own public. A Los Angeles Times poll shows that Californians believe that “most legislators are for sale to fat-cat campaign contributors.”

What explains the Legislature’s decline in national esteem and in Californians’ opinion? Its leaders have decades of service; veteran legislators abound in both chambers; it is the most lavishly funded of any Legislature in the nation; it is the most comprehensively staffed (more than 3,000 aides serve 120 legislators) and its retirees have the most generous pensions.

If such standards could guarantee success, California’s Legislature would still be No. 1. In fact, these are the very features that disable it in its most important role, as a representative body.

Their long years in Sacramento are precisely the reason why so many of our legislators are out of step with today’s California. Sheltered from electoral tides in safe districts, incumbent California legislators have lost only nine times in 580 races since 1982. Immunized against political change, with only a trickle of new members from election to election, the legislative caucuses produce a kind of petrified politics in which the policy conflicts of the 1970s and early 1980s are continuously replayed.

Extremism in the caucuses is encouraged by gerrymandering. Stacked with registrants of one party, ultrasafe districts encourage partisan stalemates and ideological grandstanding.

Legislators’ huge office budgets and ever-growing staffs afford further insulation from the people. Staff members perform many duties in place of the representatives themselves, from answering constituency mail to drafting their bills. Staff do the detailed research on policy needs.

Safe districts and bloated staffs undergird today’s privileged Capitol lifestyle. Cash and other rewards multiply its attractions. Some legislators (Willie Brown is only the most flamboyant example) build fortunes in the course of their Sacramento careers. Legislators vote themselves generous allowances, lease luxury automobiles, fly first-class and use the sergeants-at-arms to run personal errands, even for household chores.

Every incumbent is the beneficiary of a pension program that can yield $5,000, even $10,000 per month. For many legislators, it is by far the best job they can ever hope to have. No wonder they want to remain in office. And no wonder their staffers jostle hungrily to fill the infrequent vacancies.

More than one-quarter of all Assembly members are former staffers. Increasingly, the Capitol attracts individuals looking for the rewards of lifelong careers there. Often, such people have no other experience in life than political involvement, no other job credentials. For them, defeat in an election would be a matter of despair. No wonder that their preoccupation is reelection.

It is a preoccupation that drives many legislators, however safe their districts, to bob and weave around every controversial issue. To stay out of trouble, they avoid controversial policy stands. Developing cozy relationships with senior bureaucrats and lobbyists, they resist change and become defenders of an increasingly indefensible status quo.

In the midst of budget snarls, freeway gridlock, drug epidemics and environmental threats, their great ambition is to maneuver out of harm’s way. The result of such legislative incapacity and stagnation is that more and more of the state’s business must be transacted through initiative measures.

The drive to remain in office leads, also, to the obsessive stockpiling of campaign funds dunned from interest groups. This is the reason why a Legislature with nearly 100% reelection rates remains awash in millions of dollars of “campaign contributions.” It is why legislators spend less time with constituents than with lobbyists (who fork out almost $100 million a year in Sacramento).

Proposition 140 offers three remedies:

* Limit the terms of incumbents. California urgently needs better--more representative and more responsive--legislators. The only way to end Sacramento’s special-interest policies and their attendant abuses is to limit terms. Legislators with limited terms can take strong stands and resist special interests. They have no need of gerrymandered districts or campaign slush funds.

* Cut the Legislature’s operating budget. This is the way to limit staff power--and to increase the involvement and thereby the understanding of legislators. * Put an end to the state’s extravagant pension plan. This is how we can rid Sacramento of its ingrown class of careerists.

Proposition 140’s three reforms will produce a Legislature that is more representative of the opinions and more responsive to the needs of a dramatically changing California. Opportunities for public service will be available to many new people--women, minorities and many others--bringing in fresh ideas and acting courageously in the interests of California’s future.

Can we really believe that our current 120 legislators and their 3,000 aides are the only capable and experienced people among nearly 20 million adult citizens? It’s time for change in the closed society of our Capitol.