DATELINE: KANSAS CITY : Do Term Limits Work? Ask One Place That’s Tried Them

Voters in Washington state and several cities go to the polls today to cast ballots on limiting the terms of public officeholders. They don’t have many examples of how it works in practice, because only a handful of states and localities have passed such measures.

Kansas City took the plunge in November, 1990, and in so doing pulled the plug on a stuck-in-a-rut City Council. Unlike some jurisdictions, Kansas City didn’t grandfather in the sitting politicians. By setting a deadline of eight years in office, the voters, in effect, fired nine of the council’s 13 sitting members.

Because the quadrennial councilmanic election fell on March 26, 1991, the impact on incumbents was immediate. Only four, those who had won their first terms in 1987, could run for re-election.

To many voters, that was just fine. The old council, made up of veteran politicians, had become entrenched in warring factions and was immobilizing local initiative.

“I think Kansas City is a better place for it,” said longtime political activist Steve Glorioso. “We won’t know the final answer for many years, but the initial reaction was it was the right thing to do.”

Political scientist Dale Neuman called term limitation “a bad idea whose time has come” but conceded that Kansas City’s new City Council seems to function better than the old one.

“While they’ve made some of the slips that any city council is likely to make, on balance, they’ve probably been more open to new ideas than their predecessors,” Neuman said. Henry E. Lyons, the guiding light behind the two-term limit, said: “When I compare newspaper reports from before to what I read now, it’s a world of difference: no scandals, no one going to jail. It’s just tremendous!”

The strongest opposition to Lyons’ campaign came from those who argued that term limitation was a ploy to reduce minority representation. Those fears proved to be unfounded. The old council included three women, one Latino and four blacks. All four blacks and the Latino had served two terms.

Two of those councilmen, including one who had served time in prison on a tax charge, filed suit in federal court to overturn the limit. The court found no racial bias and ruled against them.

In March, the voters elected to the council five women, one Latino and five blacks--among them Mayor Emanuel Cleaver, who holds the 13th council seat. Referendum backers had hoped that reducing the power of incumbents would encourage more citizens to run for office. They got their wish: More candidates filed to run for the council than ever before.

One of those, Ed Ford, ran against incumbent Chuck Weber and lost with 47% of the vote. He would not have run had the two-term limit not been in place. “I had no desire to serve on the former City Council,” he said.

Ford had resisted the idea of term limits in 1989, when a referendum that would have held councilmen to 12 years was defeated. By last November, he had had a change of heart. “Incumbency is a tremendous advantage. You don’t start off on a level playing field,” he said.

Former Councilman Mark Bryant opposed term limitation when it was proposed and has not changed his mind. “No one who has not been a city employee is capable of understanding the intricacies of City Hall in a major metro area on the day he is elected,” Bryant said. “And it takes anywhere from six months to two years just to learn your way around and figure out how to get a constituent sidewalks and street lighting. At least for a period of time, the constituency suffers from the inexperience of the elected official.”

Bryant does not miss serving on the City Council. It took too much time away from his law practice, he said.

Former Councilman Bob Lewellen said that he at first resented being forced to give up his seat but now thinks the principle is just.

“Politicians lose their drive and enthusiasm for new ideas,” Lewellen said, acknowledging that, after eight years, he and his former colleagues were getting a bit stale. Once the political system starts to adapt to the idea that all terms, including those in state and federal offices, are limited, he said, it will become more hospitable to change.