Taking California Back to Amateur Status : Term limits: In a time when voters demand efficient and responsible government, they paradoxically have voted for inexperience and incompetence.

By a narrow margin, California voters have enacted one of the most sweeping changes in the nature of representative government in the state’s history.

Recognizing that government touches the lives of everyone in some sensitive ways--transportation, environment, tax reform, infrastructure, children, schools, health and mental health services or the economy--voters have nevertheless chosen a path that is totally inconsistent with every other endeavor one can think of. By approving the term limits mandated by Proposition 140, the electorate has in effect cast a vote for inexperience and incompetence in the leadership of this great nation-state of 30 million people. At the same time, people expect the state to be run efficiently and responsibly.

On the other hand, in every profession or trade one can name, whether journalism, law, medicine, engineering, teaching, plumbing or carpentry, experience and competence are not only encouraged but demanded. With the passage of Proposition 140, we are reverting to an idealistic, simplistic and archaic concept of government that was more appropriate when surgeons were really just barbers who bled people and the other professions were also in their infancy. Those days are no more.

When the time comes that every four years half of the state Senate is composed of neophytes and half are looking for their next job, it will be interesting to see how many understand or even care about the intricacies of the massive Medi-Cal system (“Just exactly what is a Medi-Cal fiscal intermediary?”) or how many have an understanding of complex legal issues such as product liability or diminished capacity.

It is regrettable that at a time when California faces immense social and economic problems and is experiencing massive population increases; when comprehensive and thoughtful solutions are needed, that California will have returned its Legislature to the status of rank amateurism--as it was in its early days, when railroad magnates were dominant. We have forgotten our history and, as George Santayana observed, are now condemned to repeat it.