Question 5: Extending term limits from 4 to 6

loading...

Question 5 on the Nov. 6 state ballot offers voters the chance to extend current legislative term limits from four to six terms.

Even though good-government advocates such as the League of Women Voters of Maine endorse passage of the measure, term limits remains a thorny issue for legislators and observers of the Legislature.

In 1993, voters adopted term limits for members of the state House of Representatives and state Senate, barring legislators from seeking a fifth consecutive term in either chamber. Legislators could, under the adopted law, leave one body after four consecutive terms and immediately seek and win four consecutive terms in the other body.

The measure carried with 68 percent of voters in favor. The question was placed on the ballot after a statewide petition drive that garnered nearly 100,000 signatures and was supported in an advertising campaign underwritten by the late philanthropist Elizabeth Noyce.

Limiting legislative terms was seen at the time as a reaction to a contentious State House. The most dramatic example was the 1991 shutdown of state government perpetrated by a stalemate between then-Gov. John McKernan and the Democratic-controlled Legislature over proposed changes to workers’ compensation insurance.

Speaker of the House John Martin, who had served consecutive terms from the mid-1960s through the 1990s, was also seen as a reason for adopting limits. Martin wielded tremendous power in the House, and just before the referendum vote, a key aide of his was implicated in ballot tampering in a legislative election recount.

In 1994, Maine voters approved a referendum putting term limits on the state’s congressional delegation, but that was later declared unconstitutional.

Sen. Richard Rosen, R-Bucksport, thinks term limits work.

“I support term limits,” he said, although he admitted to being ambivalent about the number of terms attached to the limit.

When it came up in the Senate, Rosen voted against the proposed change to six terms because it was submitted by legislators, whereas the current law was generated by voters.

“For that reason, I’m happy to leave [term limits] the way they are,” he said. “I don’t see the groundswell from the public to change that. Maine wants a citizen Legislature, and they made that very clear.”

Rosen also said the advent of term limits put an end to long-held committee chairman positions, a positive change, he believes. Rosen, who is serving his second term in the Senate after serving three terms in the House, said he will vote against the ballot measure.

Rep. Sean Faircloth, D-Bangor, who voted against the original term limits measure, generally supports the proposed extension.

“I was a purist” when the 1993 measure was proposed, he said. Having majored in government in college and then studying the Constitution in law school, Faircloth believed “term limits are [achieved] at the ballot box.”

Yet now he believes limiting rank-and-file legislators to just four consecutive terms has been generally a good thing. But another part of the current law limits those in legislative leadership to just three terms, and that does not serve state government well, Faircloth argued.

“That hamstrings the system,” he said.

Faircloth, currently majority leader in the House, does not have designs on being speaker, he said, but believes it is increasingly difficult for leaders to take on big problems and find fixes in short tenures.

Even the brightest of rising legislative stars would take two terms to successfully win a leadership post, he said, which would leave the leader with just two terms to accomplish his goals.

“In effect, they are a lame duck,” Faircloth said.

“We’ve backed our way into a situation where it’s extremely rare to have two terms as a presiding officer,” he said.

With longer tenures among leaders, “you’d see more results on these heavy-lifting issues,” such as tax reform, he said.

Faircloth also sees a shift in the balance of power in Augusta since term limits were adopted away from elected officials.

“The net result for Maine people is an empowerment for the bureaucracy and lobbyists,” he said, and not for elected officials, who aren’t as well-versed in the history of state law.

The 1993 measure was “too much of an emotional reaction to John Martin,” Faircloth said.

Faircloth, who will vote in favor of Question 5, is in his third consecutive term in the House. He previously served a term in the Senate and a term in the House.

Martin, a Democrat from Eagle Lake, is now a state senator. He believes he was unfairly tagged with the “poster child for term limits” label.

“I became the villain,” he said, yet voters in his district continue to elect him, and Martin serves on the powerful Appropriations Committee.

He noted that 37 other states have adopted similar limits. While he has not decided how he will vote on Question 5, like Faircloth he thinks term limits have strengthened appointed officials.

Term limits work for “people who are lazy” and don’t vote to remove people they don’t like from elected office, he argued.

The school consolidation initiative may suffer flaws because it was rushed, Martin said, in part because of term limits. The Sinclair Act, which organized school districts, took years to percolate through the State House, he said, and was better for it.

Maine’s term limit law was the subject of an extensive report completed by Richard Powell of the University of Maine and Rich Jones of the National Conference of State Legislatures and available at ncsl.org/jptl/casestudies/Maine-FinalReportv2.pdf. The report noted an increase in bills submitted, many of them characterized as attempts to “reinvent the wheel,” probably due to a lack of experience by neophyte legislators.

The League of Women Voters of Maine supports passage of the measure, arguing on its Web site that “extending term limits for state legislative offices from four to six terms is a moderate reform that will address some of the serious adverse effects of term limits. Maine needs this reform. Term limits make the Legislature less effective. They weaken the Legislature’s role in crafting sound policy solutions to complex problems.”

The League further argued: “By disqualifying legislators who have been able to gain skill through experience, term limits dilute the effective performance of the Legislature and weaken [its] role in crafting sound policy solutions to complex problems.

“Because term-limited legislators want to act quickly on their priority issues, they are more likely to focus on short term, urgent topics, rather than complex, long-term issues.”

If Question 5 passes, no person elected to serve a fourth consecutive term as a member of the House or Senate in the current Legislature would be eligible to serve as a member of that same body in the next Legislature.