Long ago, legislators came to Tallahassee every other year. They had no staff and no interim committee meetings and they were not allowed to file bills before a session began. They stayed for 60 days in odd-numbered years and went away.
They were lawmakers with very little power. And most of them represented more pine trees than people.
The real power was in the lobbyists, the governor and Cabinet and bureaucrats who spent most of their days in the Capitol. Even the governor's power was limited. He could not remain in office for more than four years, and much of what he did depended on getting a majority vote from six elected Cabinet members.
In 1968, Florida voters approved a new state Constitution bringing lawmakers to Tallahassee every year. They hired staff to handle the heavy lifting and added interim committee meetings one week a month from September until the session began. They also allowed lawmakers to begin prefiling bills months before the session.
Governors got the right to seek a second term and name a lieutenant governor.
The Legislature got stronger and tended to look at what was best for the state as a whole.
In 1982, court decisions and reapportionment gave us single-member districts. Instead of electing a group of legislators from a multicounty district, lawmakers crafted individual districts, literally carving up the state and awarding a piece to each member.
Lawmakers got really interested in their hometown districts and far less interested in solving the state's problems as a whole.
Beginning in the 1990s, the governor's role started getting stronger while the Legislature began to grow weaker. In 1992 voters approved a constitutional amendment that limited the terms of legislators and Cabinet members to eight years. The Constitution already limited governors to eight years.
In 1998, voters approved another amendment that reduced the size of the Cabinet from six to three members. It gave the governor the right to appoint people who were once elected, the education commissioner and the secretary of state.
In 2000, the first year that term limits tossed people out of office, fresh faces arrived in the Legislature. It was supposed to create an atmosphere filled with public servants willing to give up eight years of their lives to spend time in the Legislature.
The Senate suddenly began to look like a home for former House members - the place where most of them began their legislative careers. The House became a junior player.
Many predicted term limits would increase the influence of lobbyists and legislative staff. They were half right. A lot of staffers were tossed out by the new legislators, but the lobbyists remained.
Republicans won control of the Legislature in 1996 and since 1998 have frequently given a Republican governor enormous power over what they do. They even let the current governor decide when he wants to receive their bills so he can time the signing or veto.
As a result, the balance of power created by the Constitution has shifted. We no longer have co-equal branches of government. Even the judiciary has grown weaker with the passage of laws designed to overturn court opinions and change the way judges are selected.
Some blame term limits for much of this. And they support a move to extend the eight-year limit to 12 years. Resolutions to allow voters to decide this have been filed but received little attention.
Lawmakers are cautious about going back to voters who overwhelmingly approved the eight-year limit. But many believe the original vote was aimed more at members of Congress who have since been exempted by the courts.
Five of the 11 states that adopted term limits have modified or eliminated their original limits.
