The case against local term limits: Trustee Soper's speech to Delta's businessmen

In May of this year, Hugh Sanburg and Chalmer Swain asked the Delta County Commissioners to approve a referendum for the general election ballot removing term limits for the offices of sheriff and coroner. Today, I’m going to make the case against term limits.

The national wave of initiatives limiting state legislative terms swept California, Colorado and Oklahoma in 1990.  Subsequently, 18 other states adopted term limits, but in four - Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming - term limits were thrown out by the state supreme courts, and they have been repealed by the legislatures in Idaho and Utah. That leaves 15 states with term limits for legislators.

In 1990 Colorado voters passed an initiative limiting state legislators to four two-year terms in the House of Representatives and two four-year terms in the Senate. The full effect of term limits was known by 1998. Since that year, researchers have learned a lot about the impact of term limits on Colorado and our legislative process.

Professor John Straayer, a well-known political scientist at Colorado State University, let a National Conference on State Legislatures study examining term limits in Colorado. The study revealed several fascinating impacts of term limits.

·        Averaging the 20 yrs prior to term limits, the mean tenure of a member of the Colorado House of Representatives was 4.5 years. For a member of the Colorado State Senate it was 6 years.

·        Before 1990 and after 1998 the Colorado legislature has had a healthy natural rotation of about 30% of its members.

  

·        After term limits, the percent of incumbents who lost re-election decreased from 7.2% to 1.2%. This means term limits has made the incumbency advantage stronger, as challengers wait until the incumbent is term limited.

·        Prior to term limits a House seat cost $20,000 and after the price has risen to $50,000 – much of this is due to running for an open seat.

·        After term limits, the mean tenure is close to 6.8 years in both the House and Senate, as there is an expectation to serve the entire time until term limited.

Tom Loftus, former speaker of the Wisconsin House of Representatives, commented that term limits are passed because of individualism. Everyone has heard of at least one elected official who has abused the public trust and over stayed their welcome.

Thomas Jefferson’s defined term limits as rotation in office.  He said, ... “by the term rotation in office, then, we mean an obligation on the holder of that office to go out at a certain period”.

The idea of term limits remains popular. Here in Delta County, during the Republican Assembly the question of term limits was raised and it failed on a vote of 161 against and 54 in favour. A few years back, a group calling itself LIMIT (Legislative Initiative Mandating Incumbent Terms) was formed to gain passage of I-553.  This initiative would have limited terms of office for both state and U.S. legislators as well as the governor and the lieutenant governor.

Professionalism – in Colorado 50-70% of term limited elected officials are elected to another office. We saw that 10 years ago right here in Delta County.

Expertise – not that many are qualified to be sheriff or coroner

At the local level more is lost than gained by term limits. I wholly support Delta County repealing term limits for the coroner and sheriff.