Panel OKs Relaxing Term Limit Restrictions

The California Constitution Revision Commission on Thursday adopted the outline of a dramatic overhaul of the state Constitution, including a surprise measure to ease the term-limit restrictions on state lawmakers.

On a vote of 12 to 6, the commission proposed that members of the state Assembly and state Senate be elected for four-year terms. They could serve a maximum of three terms--or 12 years--in each house of the Legislature.

The 80 members of the Assembly are now elected every two years and are limited by Proposition 140, passed by voters in 1990, to three terms, or six years. The 40 senators can serve only two terms, or eight years.

As with all other sections of the revision plan, the new legislative term measure would have to be approved by a two-thirds vote in each house of the Legislature and then by a majority vote in a statewide general election before it could go into effect.

Other parts of the plan would streamline the state executive departments, create a powerful new form of local government in California, reform the state budget process and school finance.

Commission Chairman William Hauck said he was pleased with the product and hoped to get it formally introduced in the Legislature by early March with the goal of putting the measure before California voters in November.

“It will be amended in the Legislature,” Hauck said, but he did not say what changes he thought might be made.

But the document challenges some popular political currents, both from the right and the left. They include some changes in Proposition 13, the tax-cutting initiative of 1978, but not in the basic 1% limit on the property tax; in Proposition 98, the teacher-backed measure of 1988 that mandates a certain level of state funding for schools, and in the term limits imposed by Proposition 140.

One opponent of the term limits change, Alan Heslop of the Claremont Colleges, said the proposal “goes clearly against the tide of public opinion” and threatens to act as a “poison pill” against the total reform package.

“We’re in the middle of an interesting experiment in Proposition 140,” Heslop added. “It ill behooves this commission to interrupt this popular experiment.”

But Hauck and others argued in behalf of the change on two fronts: That the total turnover of the Assembly membership every six years will create chaos, and that longer terms will reduce the pressure on legislators to raise campaign funds on an almost constant basis.

Relaxing the legislative term limits--which make California the most restrictive in the nation except for Nevada--was before the commission earlier this year as part of a larger change from a traditional two-house legislature to a unicameral body.

But the commission dropped the unicameral proposal the first week in February because of strong opposition within the Legislature.

The change in terms was revived Thursday as the 20-member commission met in a final drafting session.

Many details remained to be settled, however, particularly in the complex local government section that allows cities, counties, school districts and special districts to join together in new “charter” governments. These new entities would have enhanced home rule powers, including the ability to raise their own revenues if approved by a majority of voters.

Sen. Lucy Killea (I-San Diego), author of the legislation creating the commission, argued for the four-year term for Assembly members to ease the virtually full-time pressure on legislators to raise campaign funds.

“It’s a real barrier to good public policy and doing the job we were sent here to do,” she said.