The most enduring memory I have from the Detroit Chamber of Commerce's policy conference on Mackinac Island last month was the widespread scorn for the Michigan Legislature.

The kindest thing I hard was "uninformed and inexperienced." Other, more candid comments ranged from those not suitable for a family newspaper to "unbelievably incompetent."

Granted, politicians have never been popular . . . but this is a level of contempt unknown two decades ago. Why?

Much of it has to do with the sad fact that legislators in Michigan are term-limited. State house members can stay six years, maximum; state senators, eight. And then they are out of office - for life.

The voters adopted term limits in 1992. The theory was that they would break the arbitrary power of long-time incumbents and encourage "citizen legislators" over professional politicians and special interests.

I supported term limits back then. Boy, was I ever wrong! I cannot for the life of me figure out why I should have reasoned that holding public office is a job where experience is a bad thing.

Today, most Michigan lawmakers have little idea of what they're doing or how to go about it. Ambitious legislators no sooner get elected to office when they start finagling to run for the next one, hitting up the lobbyists with their hands out to raise money for the next campaign.

Either that, or they start angling for some high-paying private sector job, with all the potential conflict of interest that implies.

Yet though term limits clearly don't mean good government - the only problem is that voters seem to still like the concept.

Polls repeatedly show overwhelming resistance to lengthening term limits, let alone doing away with them altogether.

So earlier this month I was delighted to read a column on the subject by Nolan Finley, editorial page editor of the Detroit News. Finley argued that lengthening the terms is merely fooling around the edge of the problem.

And he pointed out that you have to offer the voters something important if you're going to abandon term limits. His solution: Put on the 2008 ballot a proposal to eliminate term limits -- in return for creating a part- time legislature. That makes a lot of sense.

A part-time legislature - which is what Michigan used to have, decades ago -- would achieve the original goal of "citizen legislators." It should cost a lot less than our full- time body. And it would provide those elected with time to gain experience in their job, while at the same time leaving the voters the ability to throw the bums out if they screw up. (We have always had the best form of term limits; they are called elections.)

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, it turns out only four states - California, New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan - have truly professional, full-time legislatures.

Of our neighboring states, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin have "full time lite" lawmakers, with Iowa, Minnesota and Indiana have legislators who spend around half-time in session.

Excited by the prospect, I called some of my smartest and most experienced friends to get what I figured would be support for the idea. To my surprise, several came down hard against it.

Craig Ruff, a self-described "child of the executive branch" who served in the Milliken Administration, told me trading a part-time legislature for removing term limits would be "poison."

Politics and policy are tough enough, Ruff says, and expecting people with very limited investment in their job to do it well is silly.

Worse, a part time legislature would unduly increase the already strong power of the executive branch.

Probably the best political image strategist I know is Rick Cole, who served in the Blanchard Administration and who spent years trying to do away with term limits. To my amazement, Cole is dead set against a part-time legislature. "It's an invitation to wholesale conflict of interest. Take a guy who works for the railroad in his regular job. Is he really going to be independent of the railroad interests when he's in the capital?"

Paul Hillegonds, who served as Speaker of the House in 1995-96, knows the legislative process about as well as anybody. He does find the idea of trading a part time legislature for an end to term limits attractive.

"It's worthwhile thinking hard about," he told me. "The present legislature lacks experience, basic legislative craftsmanship and the independence to take unpopular stands. And if you didn't place any limits on committee hearings, which is where the bulk of legislative work is really done, you wouldn't cede unlimited power to the executive." My own view? I still think our term-limited legislature is an albatross around the neck of good policy and good politics. But I fear that public attitudes are likely to favor term limits until a big-time scandal can be traced directly to the practice. At the end of the day, I still think the idea of a part time legislature is a good one and worth serious debate.

For one thing is clear: We need to do better than we are doing now.