Term Limits for Hawaii Reps and Senators.

[Gary Andersen]

The City Concil and Governor does it, why not our State elected officials?

[Peter Kay]

I'd like to know more from those closer to the issue as to why term limits are OK for exec & city council, yet not OK for Reps & Senators.

[Della Au Belatti]

I hope that HawaiiConCon.org will be a place where we can test the strength and merit of all ideas that are put forward.

I'd be interested in the studies you would point to in support of term limits. My understanding is that the study worked on by the National Conference on State Legislatures was/is a collaboration of serveral organizations and respected academics who spent several years and examined the effects of term limits using various tools (ie. interviews, surveys, etc.).

According to the link I provided, the publication "Coping with Term Limits: A Practical Guide" was "drawn largely from the results of the Joint Project on Term Limits (JPTL). To complete this project, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, the State Legislative Leaders Foundation and a group of distinguished political scientists from universities around the country worked together for three years, conducting an in-depth study of the effects of legislative term limits. The findings of the study are based on the results of two major surveys; a collection of data on the individual characteristics of all state legislators; interviews with hundreds of legislators, legislative staff and other observers of the legislative process; and a large body of data on the legislative process compiled from nine states."

[Carol Philips]

I think it should be some where between 3-5 terms for the State Legislature. Enough time to do good, but short enough to not sell out.

[Daniel Leuck]

Aloha Gary,

Given the fact Della is one of the few elected officials I've seen posting to this sort of forum, we could probably do without the colorful characterization of her response as "...pure gibberish, double-talk, and typical of an elected official who wants to continue to wallow and gorge at the public trough." Personal attacks will make politicians less likely to participate.

Anyone that has worked in a long lived organization knows exactly what she means by institutional memory. New people come in without knowledge of previous mistakes and successes. This can lead to a lot of wasted time and money.

She makes some good points. There are obviously pros and cons to term limits. I think the pros probably outweigh the cons, but I'm interested to hear her opinion and the opinions of others that oppose term limits.

[Peter Kay]

Dan's sort of questioning and getting input from both sides is exactly the kind of dialog we need to encourage. Excellent.

[Mel]

As far as I see it, the legislature will never vote for term limits for themselves, even though they have imposed it on the Governor and Lt. Governor. The city council never imposed term limits on themselves either. I think they got that after a charter amendment on the issue was voted in favor by the populace.

A concon would be a good thing to have if someone wanted to include term limits for legislators written into our constitution. Hopefully the makeup of the concon delegation will not include any current or former legislators. Fresh new faces may be more open to the idea of term limits.... and other things such as initiative, referendum and recall.

[Dan L.]

We already have term limits. They’re called elections. (That’s not original with me; it was coined by Karen Marchioro, a past chair of the Washington State Democratic party, and not an elected official herself.)

In my view, term limits is one of the most destructive ideas ever enacted by any government. A term limit does not promote competitive elections, and seriously hampers the people’s right to elect the representatives they desire. Furthermore, it guarantees that elected officials will be less knowledgeable and less effective in dealing with long-term problems than they are under a no-artificial-limits system.

Under term limits, competitive elections take place only when an officeholder is forced to retire. Worthy challengers will not waste their time and money running against an incumbent when they can merely wait another term and run for an open seat. This has been shown again and again in places which have term limits. So the election for the open seat is the only meaningful one; after that, unless he or she is egregiously bad, the incumbent gets a nearly free ride.

When term limits first hit Hawai‘i Island, two veteran councilmen were forced to retire. They were among the most knowledgeable, hardest-working, competent, and responsive legislators the island had; yet we were deprived of their services because of an artificial rule insisting that they leave when they were still highly effective and truly representing their constituents. The only winners in this sorry situation were the two people who replaced these excellent councilmen.

There are no term limits for bureaucrats. There are no term limits for lobbyists. Those are the big winners in a term-limited situation. The bureaucrats need not respond to elected officials very vigorously, because they know they can stall till a new batch of elected folks get in, who do not know the history. And inexperienced legislators must get their information from somewhere. If there are no long-term colleagues from whom to learn, they will have to learn from the only other knowledgeable source: lobbyists, who have large heavy axes to grind.

Term limits are a sop to the lazy citizens who can’t be bothered to get out of their recliners and work for the changes they want.

[Leonard Wilson]

Every two, four, and six years a representative's term can be limited. Among the many changes that would make education meaningful would be training in political responsibility.

[Kaunaloa]

"They’re called elections"

and

"Every two, four, and six years a representative's term can be limited"

sorry, not buying those arugments at all -- those exact same statements can be made re: any executive positon as well, yet we have constiutional provisions that "forcibly" remove them after a whopping 2 terms, whereas a legislator can simply sit in a safe, gerrymandered district for decades at a time and noone blinks; matter of fact having to only win a district [where in certain cases you yourself have a hand in shaping said district boundaries{!!}] and not a full state is yet another huge advantage leg. have over execs. when it comes to garnering perpetual re-election.

"You can gerymander a district quite easily, yet no one has yet figured out how to gerrymander a state" -- Mark Steyn

to those who feel elections are sufficent, i challenge them to immediately go on record to actively remove any and all term limits for all offices.

/not holding my breath

[Dan L.]

In my view, term limits are perhaps the most pernicious idea to grasp the public imagination since the Pet Rock. Term limits are a way for lazy people to toss people out of office, with no regard to their ability, effort, or integrity, without having to get off the couch and actually participate in politics.

We already have term limits. They're called "elections." (Quote from former Washingtion State Democratic Party Chair Karen Marchioro)

Term limits emphatically do not produce higher quality officials. They merely guarantee that no matter how well you do your job, you're out on your ear after a few years.

Nor do they promote more competitive elections. The opposite is true: serious challengers wait till the term limit of an incumbent is up, and then run for the open seat. Why waste time and money running against an incumbent, when the calendar will remove him or her for you in another two years? Incumbents are far more likely to get a free ride when there are term limits. As an example, here on Hawai‘i Island, the seven council seats where an incumbent is running for re-election have an average of 2.7 candidates. The two seats where no incumbent is running have an average of 4.5 candidates. The Mayoral race this year has 10 candidates; four years ago, when Harry Kim ran for re-election, there were five challengers who filed, and two of them were just publicizing a single issue and spent part of their time praising the Mayor and urging his re-election.

The loss of experience in the Legislature is no laughing matter. There is no term limit for bureaucrats, nor for lobbyists. If there is limited institutional memory in the Legislature, the power of these unelected but very significant people will definitely increase.

We have seen the effect of the 22nd Amendment at the federal level: the President is of increasing irrelevancy during his second term. It has happened to every President who has served more than one term since 1952: Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton, and now George II. True, only Franklin Roosevelt actually served more than two terms before that; but the threat to run was always there (a few actually tried it), and served to keep attention -- and power -- focused on the White House far more than it is now, when everybody knows Dubya will be gone in January 2009.

Governing is a difficult and demanding task, and it takes experience as well as skill to do it right. Would anyone consider dumping their family physician every eight years or so, and going instead to somebody right out of med school? Why not? Because experience is invaluable! Why denigrate it in government?

[Marty]

As a number of you are against term limits because of loss of institutional knowledge, how does anyone feel about removing term limits from the Governor and Lt Governor?

[Dan L.]

Marty said:

As a number of you are against term limits because of loss of institutional knowledge, how does anyone feel about removing term limits from the Governor and Lt Governor?

I'm strongly in favor of removing term limits. I'd like to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the U. S. Constitution as well. It was passed as a Republican backlash against FDR, and really should not be in the Constitution at all.