Logic favors less-restrictive law, but voter backlash is a factor

Official Sacramento is bracing for a potential political bombshell: the possibility that a federal judge in Oakland will soon declare that California’s legislative term limits are unconstitutional.

Such a decision could send the Legislature into a tizzy, torn between those who back the current tough limits enacted by voters in 1990 and others with visions of extended political longevity dancing in their heads.

Because fears of a voter backlash are so strong, some legislative leaders are already developing contingency plans that would reenact a constitutional amendment on term limits as quickly as possible. That could mean calling of a special election later this year to put the measure in place for the 1998 elections.

The speculation about the impending decision of U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken stems in part from her questions about a provision of the original initiative that bans lawmakers from ever running for the Legislature again once they fill the maximum number of terms.

In most other states with term limits, legislators are allowed to run again after sitting out one or more elections. Proposition 140, the 1990 measure, limits members of the Assembly to three two-year terms and members of the Senate to two four-year terms--among the most severe limits enacted by any state.

There is some logic in adopting a less-restrictive law--one perhaps that allowed more than six years’ service in the Assembly.

This is the first year since the initiative was adopted that the total membership of the lower house has turned over in a six-year period. One result seems to be that the Assembly has been slower getting down to legislative business than in the past. But Senate President pro tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) is probably correct in surmising that voters would not embrace longer term limits.

Another issue is whether lawmakers should be allowed to join the state Public Employees Retirement System on the same basis as all other state workers. Proposition 140 wiped out the lucrative legislative retirement system that existed before 1990. An argument can be made for extending retirement benefits so long as the legislators contribute, and benefit, at the same levels as other state workers.

The biggest hazard of a ruling nullifying legislative term limits is that the issue may come to dominate the 1997 session of the Legislature. One way or another, this should not be allowed to happen. Welfare reform and other issues are too important to become caught up in lawmakers’ internal feuding over their own political backsides.