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Longer term limit for legislators would really mean longer term

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published January 5, 2006

In thinking about how to make Florida better, maybe it has crossed your mind at some point:

"What we really need is to keep each member of our Legislature in office longer. That way each one will get even smarter and do a better job."

I'm kidding.

But the Legislature isn't.

The Legislature will ask you on this November's ballot to give it a longer term limit, 12 years instead of the existing eight.

There were no term limits at all until Florida voters approved them in 1992 thanks to a citizen petition. It was a landslide, with 77 percent in favor. Incumbents started getting kicked out in 2000.

Why change to 12 years now?

The Legislature's argument is that eight years isn't really enough time to learn the ropes. There are no smart old dogs to say, "You know, the last time we tried that, it didn't work."

A lot of smart people say that term limits have made the Legislature worse. They have a case.

The power grabbing starts a lot earlier. If you have only four terms in the House, or two in the Senate, and you want to rise to a powerful post, you have to start right away.

The result is the spectacle of rookies competing with each other for who will be House speaker or Senate president down the road. They line up money and votes and power long before anybody knows their merit. The jockeying only increases the influence of special interests as they line up behind future leaders.

For Florida, this has proved to be a colossal leadership crapshoot. Our current speaker and president, Alan Bense and Tom Lee, are widely hailed as decent guys. On the other hand, Bense's predecessor, Johnnie Byrd, was not.

As for the Legislature's lack of historical perspective - you can make a strong case for that, too.

Look at the track record of our Legislature for the past few years. Our Republican brothers and sisters took over in the 1990s and passed all kinds of "reforms." But they ignored every bit of common sense when it came to checks and balances.

School vouchers, privatization, more power to the governor - the Legislature's unofficial motto was, "If it's our idea, we don't need no stinking audits." We will be paying for this for years.

And yet

Before we rush off to give the Legislature 12-year term limits, there is one thing to keep in mind:

Once in office, it's almost impossible to defeat them.

You are probably tired of hearing the statistic, but it remains true. No incumbents in the Legislature were defeated in the last general election.

Zero! Sure, some of them quit. Some were forced out by term limits. Some run for higher office. Now and then, a legislator even reaches the end of the mortal coil, so to speak.

But none were defeated.

Maybe it's the rigged districts. Maybe it's the unbeatable advantage of soft money. Or, heck, maybe the Legislature (remember: the Johnnie Byrd model) did such a great job that the people of Florida rose up in gratitude and re-elected its members en masse.

But, you know, I don't think so.

For most lawmakers, therefore, a 12-year term LIMIT will mean an automatic 12-year TERM, if that's what they want.

Neither can the genie be put back in the bottle. Longer term limits will not reverse the corrupting influence of money and the race for power that has evolved.

Instead, what we will get with 12 years is more of the same, except longer.

Why bring this up in January, 10 months before the election? Because there is a little bit of cackling among the Tallahassee-types over their cleverness. Some of them believe that when voters see an amendment on the ballot with the title, "TERM LIMITS," they will automatically vote yes, without reading the fine print.

So it's not too early to talk about it. If the voters of Florida truly are convinced that 12 years is better than eight, then they will be entitled to change their form of government. It is an irony of ironies that the Legislature, which fights or ignores citizen petitions for amendments that it doesn't like, does not share that view the rest of the time.

[Last modified January 5, 2006, 01:17:09]