There is a growing populist movement in the term limits arena, and it’s probably not what you think.  Well, if by populist you count PhDs in political science and some local city councils as a populist movement.  But even given the top-down nature of this rebellion, the move to loosen the restrictions on term limits is gaining momentum around the state.  The LA City Council has placed a measure on the ballot to increase the limit on terms from two to three and the OC Board of Supervisors is also considering doing so as well.  And of course, there is the multitude of discussions going on in Sacramento about decreasing restrictions in some sort of trade for redistricting reform.

Term limits just don’t work as they were intended it seems:

Populist fervor led term limits to be imposed across a wide swath of the nation beginning in 1990, in a belief that limiting politicians’ length of service would make them more accountable to voters. But there has been a growing sense among political experts that term limits have wrought unintended consequences: diminished policy expertise, increased special interest power and the constant distraction of looking for the next elected office….Still, term limits remain popular with voters, and political observers say attempts to change them face an uphill battle. (LA Times 7/31/06)

Popular indeed.  A 2004 Field Poll revealed that 75% of the state’s electorate favored term limits in general.  More recent polls suggest a slight, but not major slide in support for term limits. 

However, I’m not sure that you need to totally scrap the concept of term limits. We just need some revisions.  The term limits reform package being floated in the Legislature is one example of this.  It allows legislators to serve longer terms in one house of the Legislature, rather than having to swap houses after 6 or 8 years.  This is a policy recommended by a 2004 PPIC report.

Overall, the effects of term limits on Sacramento’s policymaking process have been profound. In both houses, committees now screen out fewer bills assigned to them and are more likely to see their work rewritten at later stages. As a body, the Legislature is less likely to alter the governor’s budget, and its own budget process fails to encourage fiscal discipline. Legislative oversight of the executive branch has declined significantly. “Legislators are learning more quickly than in the past, but frequent changes in the membership – and especially in the leadership – are taking a toll,” says Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies and Robson Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. (PPIC 11/10/04)

If the framing on these changes is changed from removing term limit restrictions to reforming them in order to gain better leadership, I think a ballot measure wouldn’t be totally ridiculous.  It’s hard to see a real constituency for a No Campaign on such a measure, but a solid Yes campaign would be required to inform the voters of the good government effects of such a revision.