Proposition 13 Aftereffects

Edwin Yoder’s essay (Commentary, Sept. 8) on term limits is intimately connected to your analysis of Prop. 13’s impact on government’s ability to provide services (Sept. 8).

Yoder argues that term limits will not change the quality of legislation as long as the only way to get elected and reelected is to win the most votes. For a long time, certainly over the last 12 years, winning those votes required candidates to pander to the short-term interests of people who actually vote, i.e., people with decent incomes. Once elected, they simply did what the electorate wanted. There is no reason to expect term limits to change this.

It is ironic to see Paul Gann’s son calling government “piggish” when it is simply following the mandate of the same shortsighted electorate that enacted the not-so-elaborate Ponzi scheme known as Prop. 13. Like any pyramid scam, it only worked when people kept buying in. Now that the pyramid has collapsed and the Golden State has been bronzed, Jarvis and Gann have been unveiled as no less opportunistic than the politicians they loved to hate. Unfortunately, our schools, our hospitals, our libraries and our mentally ill suffer because of their expediency.

Perhaps we need term limits on initiatives, too.

JOSEPH W. DOHERTY

Los Angeles