Senate Panel Will Sue to Overturn Limits on Legislative Terms

The Senate Rules Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to file a lawsuit challenging Proposition 140, the voter-approved measure that imposed term limits and budget cuts on legislators and stripped them of their pension and health benefits.

The Assembly Rules Committee is expected to decide today whether to join the suit, which will be filed in about two weeks by Joseph Remcho, a San Francisco attorney who has represented the Legislature in previous lawsuits.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) made it clear that no public funds would be used to challenge Proposition 140. The cost, which Remcho said would grow to several hundred thousand dollars, will come from contributions, although Roberti did not say from whom.

“We’re dealing with a divided populace,” Roberti said, explaining the political difficulty of using public money in the suit.

The vote from the three Democrats and two Republicans on the committee was unanimous.

Remcho told the committee that his principal argument will be that Proposition 140 represents such a fundamental change in the balance between the Legislature and the executive branch of government that it is a revision rather than an amendment to the state Constitution.

Just last month, the state Supreme Court invalidated key portions of Proposition 115, an anti-crime measure, ruling that it was a revision rather than an amendment.

The Constitution can be amended through a ballot initiative, but a revision must be placed before voters by the Legislature or through a constitutional revision commission.

Proposition 140 “profoundly diminishes the Legislature’s ability to compete with the other two branches of government,” Remcho told the committee.

He said the ballot measure means that inexperienced lawmakers with only a minimum of professional staff to advise them will not be able to adequately question the governor or lobbyists for powerful special interests.

After the meeting, he said several individual voters will join the Legislature as plaintiffs in the suit.

Remcho said he will also argue that term limits will deprive voters of their right to elect whom they please to the Legislature.

At the same time, the Rules Committee moved to implement a portion of Proposition 140 that requires the legislative budget to be trimmed by 40%.

The plan approved by the panel reduces the Senate budget by more than $12.5 million. The staffs for all select, special and joint committees and task forces would be eliminated. Staffs for the party caucuses, floor leaders and the Rules Committee would be cut by 30%.

Roberti is to cut his own staff by 40%.

There also is to be a 20% cut in standing committee staff and a 50% reduction in the Senate Office of Research. A part of its function is to be transferred to the State Library.