AUGUSTA – Maine’s six-year experiment with term limits could be reconsidered by voters next year if the Legislature approves a bill recommended Wednesday by a legislative panel.

Eight members of the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee voted unanimously in favor of LD 1340, which seeks an advisory referendum on repealing legislative term limits during the Nov. 5 general election. Should Maine voters favor repeal, the bill requires the committee to report out a bill next year to “implement the perceived will of the people.”

The measure passed with relatively little discussion.

“I think it’s time that this went out once again for the people of the state of Maine to vote on,” said committee member Rep. Janice LaBrecque, R-Gorham, “because I have heard that a number of our constituents are not happy with term limits and that some of them have said that they were confused when they voted on it.”

Last year, a similar bill with a referendum provision that would have repealed term limits passed overwhelmingly in the House but was killed 20-12 in the Senate. The vote reflected the level of discomfort many lawmakers felt in dealing with an issue that affected them personally, as well as one that seemed to contradict the will of the people. But some members of the committee did not share that view Wednesday.

“Some people think these referendums are acts of God or something,” LaBrecque said.

In 1993, Mainers voted 159,785 to 76,732 in favor of the current law, which limits legislators to serving no more than four consecutive two-year terms. The decision came on the heels of a 1991 state government shutdown caused by entrenched partisan politics in the State House over Workers’ Compensation costs and the 1992 “ballotgate” scandal. An investigation of that incident culminated in ballot-tampering convictions against a key aide to then-House Speaker John L. Martin, D-Eagle Lake.

Barred by term limits from seeking an unprecedented 16th consecutive term in the House, Martin sat out one legislative term, returning as a rank-and-file representative in 1999. He was elected in 2000 as a member of the Maine Senate. He has been referred to as the single reason for term limits by his enemies.

In the years that followed, Republicans found the law they had campaigned to enact was working against them as well as their Democratic opponents. Veteran GOP legislators also were forced to step down and many chose not to return.

Criticisms also have been raised in recent years about the impact of the law on the Legislature, blaming term limits for contributing to amateurish lawmakers, more influential lobbyists, a diminished sense of institutional memory and a stronger executive branch.

Republicans and Democrats in both houses and even Gov. Angus S. King have expressed a desire to revisit the term limits question, which originally arrived at the polls through a referendum campaign financed largely by the late Elizabeth B. Noyce of Bremen.

An initiative that would have altered the term limits law by extending the number of consecutive terms has been rejected several times by the Legislature.

This year, proponents are more hopeful. Although five committee members who were absent Wednesday can still weigh in on the bill, the eight affirmative votes will carry the measure positively to the full Legislature.

What happens there will depend heavily on what constituents have to say, and also whether lawmakers can be convinced that the 1993 vote was simply a knee-jerk reaction by voters to a bad political season. Committee members such as Rep. Theodore Heidrich, R-Oxford, and Richard H. Duncan, R-Presque Isle, thought some voters found the entire issue confusing in 1993.

“My feeling on term limits is that we always had term limits because people can vote us out if we don’t do the job,” Heidrich said. “I don’t think people were informed properly on term limits and I think we should revisit it.”

Rep. John Tuttle, D-Sanford, sponsored the bill and is the House chair of the committee. He agreed to amend some of the language in his bill that would have given voters a choice of either extending the number of terms of service or outright repeal. His bill could be amended further in the House or Senate, possibly to include a provision for a binding, rather than advisory, referendum vote.

Sen. John L. Martin felt the committee could compromise the credibility of the Legislature with a self-serving advisory vote and encouraged members to pursue the initiative process using petitions if they really felt strongly about repeal.

“I don’t support term limits. Everyone knows that. But the question here is the process and whether there’ll be a negative reaction with people saying ‘there goes the Legislature again,'” he said. “Right now, with the low number of signatures needed to start a referendum, it seems that would be an easier way to do it.”

Rep. John Michael, an independent from Auburn who worked to pass congressional term limits and supported the 1993 legislative term limits, accused the committee of passing the buck Wednesday on an issue that should be initiated at the grass-roots level.

“The committee’s deluding themselves,” he said. “They’ve convinced themselves that the public wants to repeal term limits, which as anybody knows is not so. The proof of the pudding is that they are unwilling to go out and get the signatures to put it on the ballot themselves, so they want to convince the Legislature to take a hit, look real bad and put it on the ballot as an advisory referendum.”

Rep. Tuttle maintains he is only responding to constituent concerns.

“People are telling me that they want a chance to vote on it again,” he said. “I think people didn’t grasp the significance of their vote until their own legislator was affected. They might say, for instance, that they don’t mind term-limiting John Martin, but when it comes to their legislator – it’s a different story.”