By Susan J. Demas

Randy Richardville never expected the rally, the megaphone or the monstrous Trojan horse carted out before his Monroe office.

It was the fall of 2004, and he was finishing up his last term in the state House. In an exit interview, a reporter happened to ask the Republican about term limits. He mused that they should be extended. It didn't take long for limited government activists to pounce.

"It just caught me off guard," Richardville said. "I didn't even remember making the comment. I didn't plan to run for office again."

Today, Richardville is a state senator, and he believes term limits have been a mixed bag. On one hand, he says they've brought people with different backgrounds to Lansing. On the other, he says there have been unintended consequences with an influx of inexperienced legislators who often are overrun by lobbyists and bureaucrats.

Michigan is entering its 17th year under term limits. Nowadays, if you ask most lobbyists, bureaucrats and followers of state government what the biggest problem is in Lansing, chances are, they'll finger term limits.

"They’ve generally been a failure," said Bill Rustem, president of the Lansing-based public policy firm Public Sector Consultants. "They've meant the government is focused on the short-term rather than the long-term. There's an inability to understand complicated issues. There's an unwillingness of competent people to seek office."

But U.S. Term Limits (USTL), the Fairfax, Va.-based group that spearheaded the term limits ballot initiative in Michigan and about a dozen other states, asserts that public opinion is on its side. USTL's latest polling shows 83 percent of people nationwide back term limits, said President Philip Blumel. He argues voters have benefitted from more competitive elections and by having representatives who aren't entrenched in the political system.

"If you truly can't master being a legislator in eight years, you shouldn't be a legislator," Blumel said. "It's just not that hard a job."

That's something that former U.S. Rep. and state Sen. Joe Schwarz finds hard to swallow. The Battle Creek Republican points out the state of Michigan has a $44 billion budget that's incredibly complex. He says lawmakers in recent years have bungled it, failing to solve the structural budget deficit. He served on a National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL) panel studying term limits in the 1990s.

"Term limits have done irreparable damage to the ability of the state Legislature to form and enact public policy in those states," he said. "The state is the poorer, and the Legislature as a whole is the poorer because of term limits. There is no substitute for experience. You have leaders in the House in their second and third terms. It is counterproductive, bordering on absurd."

At last year's Mackinac Policy Conference – the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce's shindig for insiders — anti-term limits sentiment ran high on several panels. Critics pointed to a loss of institutional memory, a decline in relationships among legislators, growing partisanship and rise of power in the executive branch at the expense of the Legislature. And they argued that we already have term limits – otherwise known as elections.

Patrick Anderson, the CEO of the Anderson Economic Group who chaired the Term Limits Defense Committee, was vastly outnumbered. But he told conference attendees that term limits had served a vital purpose.

"It got to the point where there was less turnover in Congress than in the Soviet Politburo," Anderson said. "Did we say that term limits would put an end to rancor and discord in the Legislature? No, we didn't. We did not intend to make legislators stop acting like politicians. No, that's what churches are for."

Proposal B

Term limits didn't magically appear in Michigan, of course. Fifty-nine percent of voters approved the constitutional amendment known as Proposal B in November 1992. There was no real organized campaign against the initiative largely funded by USTL.

"Elected officials didn't want to appear that they were just protecting their own jobs," Rustem said.

"We snoozed in the Legislature, and it was a fatal mistake," concurred Schwarz. "In retrospect, I’m amazed how little attention we paid to it, and I don't know why. I think for those of us in the Senate, we thought, 'That's 10 years away. Why worry?' I don’t think anyone took into consideration the magnitude of the effects on the legislative branch of government – more than in the executive branch."

He adds that the executive branch, boosted by a strong civil service, "runs circles around the term-limited Legislature every day of the week" and legislative staff "plays the Legislature like Yo-Yo Ma plays the cello."

Several term limits critics actually voted for them initially. One of them is Bob LaBrant, senior vice president and legal counsel for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.

"I thought it was the only way to get rid of Dominic Jacobetti," he said, referring to the powerful Democratic former House Appropriations Committee chair who died in 1994.

The anti-term-limits movement has an interesting financial history in Michigan. U.S. Term Limits was founded in 1992 by Howard Rich, a New York real estate magnate and anti-government activist. He bought the assets of Citizens for Congressional Reform (CCR), founded by heirs to the Koch Industries fortune. According to ethics watchdog Common Cause, CCR disbanded in 1991 after term-limits opponents filed a complaint about a donor list with then-Michigan Secretary of State Richard Austin.

Michigan now imposes one of the strictest limits in the nation – three two-year terms in the House and two four-year terms in the Senate. Arkansas and California have the same limits. Elected executive officials – the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state – are barred from serving more than two four-year terms in Michigan.

The amendment also limited terms for members of Congress, but that part was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 in U.S. Term Limits vs. Thornton. The high court has declined to hear a challenge to state term limits.

Fifteen states have term limits, and some go even further than those in the Great Lakes State. Maine, Nebraska and South Dakota all stop lawmakers from serving more than eight years. But the NCSL doesn't expect any more states to jump on the term limits bandwagon. Elections expert Jenny Drage Bowser points out that U.S. Term Limits has run out of states that have ballot initiative processes.

So far, six states have nixed term limits – Idaho, Massachusetts, Wyoming, Oregon, Utah and Washington. The Idaho and Utah legislatures repealed their own term limits, while in the other four states, the courts intervened. Voters in three states – Oregon, Mississippi and North Dakota – have said no to term limits. (Oregon appears twice because a ballot initiative failed to reinstate term limits after the Oregon Supreme Court tossed them out in 2002).

But experts are not optimistic about Michigan following suit because there’s a constitutional amendment on the books. That means that any change to term limits has to go before the voters – and term limits remain popular with them. California, Arkansas, South Dakota, Maine and Missouri all tried to alter term limits, and "that failed pretty miserably," Bowser said.

USTL’s polling isn’t far off from statewide surveys done by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the Michigan Education Association.

So why are term limits so popular?

"Well, for one thing, voters still have the 'Throw the bums out' attitude about elected officials in general," Bowser said. "Not our own representatives or senators – there’s sort of an incongruity there. And a lot of the negative effects of term limits are something that don't register on the general level of the public. Journalists, academics and lobbyists see the changes happening. But the average person is a limited watcher of government. They’re OK as long as the place doesn't shut down."

Of course, that's exactly what happened for five hours on Oct. 1, 2007, when lawmakers and Gov. Jennifer Granholm couldn’t hash out a final budget after nine months of trying.

Former House Speaker Paul Hillegonds, who also served on the NCSL panel on term limits, said there's a lack of trust between lawmakers. Because there's little time to get to know each other under term limits, many legislators don't engage others outside their party and geographic area. He points out that there was a decade of "false starts" over education funding and property tax reform before legislators crafted Proposal A in 1994, buoyed by lawmakers' experience and bipartisan bonds.

Hillegonds said it would be "extraordinarily difficult" for the Legislature to produce something like Proposal A today.

Blumel, the head of U.S. Term Limits, argues that there's a "higher quality of legislators in term limits states." But even he admits that Michigan doesn't fall into that category. For that, he blames the fact that the state has a full-time body composed of the second-highest paid lawmakers in the country.

"The problems go beyond what term limits can solve," he said. "Term limits aren’t a panacea."

Tossing out term limits

So let's say you hate term limits, but voters don't. Bowser says there are two options: Start a massive voter education drive to dump them, or beef up training for elected officials on legislative history and process. So far the latter has been met with mixed results in other states, she said.

At this point, many opponents seem resigned that Michigan is stuck with term limits in the near future. This could be resolved at a Constitutional Convention, which voters can approve on the 2010 ballot. But a Con-Con would open the state up to dozens of other constitutional questions, and so far, few people are advocating that we should go down that road.

Rustem estimates that an anti-term limits movement would take five to seven years to get off the ground. Constitutional amendments typically require $1 to $2 million just to get on the ballot – and advertising and voter education cost millions more. Both he and Hillegonds say there needs to be a firm alliance between the left and right, namely business and labor interest groups, to launch a campaign. The most realistic option seems to be lengthening term limits, not trying to kill them.

"They got it right, but they didn’t get it perfect," is Rustem’s suggestion for a slogan.

The Michigan Chamber has been looking for a way out since 1995. LaBrant said the organization saw an opening in 2007 when lawmakers were considering reinstituting a presidential primary. The idea was that voters in that election would be more sympathetic to reforming term limits. The Chamber's plan was to knock the time limit down to 12 years but stipulate that the time could be spent in either chamber. But the deal fell apart.

LaBrant blames Democrats for thwarting efforts. At the time, the Michigan Democratic Party for was working on a sweeping government reform ballot proposal of its own – the now-defunct Reform Michigan Government Now. That didn't include term limits reform but would have downsized the number of Supreme Court justices, slashed lawmaker pay and made big changes to the redistricting process.

Since then, the Chamber has made no effort to revive the plan. LaBrant's current assessment of term limits is: "They're not going anywhere."

For his part, Schwarz says support for term limits is soft. He'd like to see something on the 2010 ballot. He considered wading into this territory, fresh off a victory last year on Proposal 2, which overturned the ban on embryonic stem cell research. But he doesn't see a grassroots movement taking hold right now.

Two lawmakers have picked up the baton, introducing resolutions this session. They would have to be approved by a two-thirds majority in both houses and then be placed before voters. House Appropriations Chair George Cushingberry (D-Detroit) is sponsoring House Joint Resolution L, which would be a flat-out ban of term limits.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester) has introduced Senate Joint Resolution A, which would eliminate term limits for officials starting in 2011 (after he’s out of office) and institute a part-time Legislature. Bishop echoes the sentiment that term limits have caused gridlock, as "relationships tend to develop right as it's time to hit the door." He backs the part-time concept to save money and push legislators to accomplish more.

"By design, this is meant to curb any criticism from the opposition that the Legislature is somehow self-serving in this endeavor," he said. "At the end of the day, the introduction (of the resolution) is meant to begin a dialogue on how we might strengthen state government and get it working in the best interests of the state."

Few expect the resolutions to go anywhere, although it's encouraging to term-limits opponents that they came from leadership in both chambers. U.S. Term Limits is carefully monitoring Michigan’s efforts to challenge its handiwork, and Blumel adds that group knows "special interests and politicians in the state will spend considerable money."

But the anti-term limits crowd may have an unlikely ally. Anderson said at the Mackinac Conference that he's open to extending term limits, but urged this to be done in a "straightforward" way instead of via a "camouflaged" proposal.

"I never said that six (years in the House) and eight (years in the Senate) were perfect numbers," he said. "I'm willing to consider changing the terms."

The question now is if voters will ever be given the chance to change their minds, too.

Susan J. Demas is 2006 Knight Foundation Fellow in nonprofits journalism and a political analyst for Michigan Information & Research Service.