No on Amendments A and B

Californians’ love affair with term limits goes back more than 10 years and, like many loves, it hasn’t lived up to its promises. That is reason to vote no March 5 on Los Angeles County Charter Amendment A, which would enforce limits for all elected county officials, and Charter Amendment B, for county supervisors only.

The flirtation began with limiting state legislators in 1990. Assembly members, now restricted to six years in office, barely figure out what they’re doing before they’re forced out. Senators, with eight years, become lame ducks after four. Institutional memory is lost. Only lobbyists remain constant--and grow increasingly powerful. By all reports, utility companies essentially wrote the details of the 1996 law deregulating electricity while mostly newbie lawmakers stood by. The result? Last year’s rolling blackouts and rate increases.

The Los Angeles City Council will be in the same mess in a few years when every seat will have turned over. If trends hold up, a good number of the candidates running to fill those seats will be termed-out legislators. Term limits don’t necessarily send politicians back to the ranks of civilians. Lame-duck leaders just spend their second terms thinking about which office to run for next. And forget long-term planning or projects that take years of patient nurturing to come to fruition. City Council veteran Hal Bernson fought for two decades to make the abandoned Chatsworth Reservoir a nature preserve. No one will take up such long and difficult crusades tomorrow.

Term-limit advocates were attempting to fix turnover’s opposite, stagnation. A favorite example is the county supervisors, who seem to acquire lifelong tenure by virtue of huge districts that make opposing them prohibitively costly. In the March 5 election one incumbent up for reelection is unopposed and the other has a single, little-known opponent. But there are better fixes than term limits, ones that don’t create new problems. The supervisors passed campaign finance reforms in 1996 that set contribution and spending limits; a public matching-funds program would do even more to help opponents get their messages out and give voters choices. Increasing the size of the five-member Board of Supervisors--something voters have so far declined to do--would help dilute each individual’s power and open up the board to fresh faces.

The Board of Supervisors reluctantly placed term limits on the ballot to settle a lawsuit brought by supporters of a citizens initiative campaign. Should either amendment pass it would almost certainly wind up in court.

Amendments A and B would impose three-term, or 12-year, limits. That’s better than what the state and city have but still not as good as what voters can do now: turn out a bad politician after one term or keep a good one in office past three terms. Whatever problems government may have, term limits aren’t the fix they have been sold as. Vote no on Charter Amendments A and B.