Michael B. Farrell of the Christian Science Monitor on the weakening effect of term limits in CA. Interesting take on a little-explored aspect of the budget crisis.
While lobbyists play a significant role in any state’s budget process, experts say California lawmakers have become uniquely prone to outside influence because of strict term limits approved by voters in 1990. Assembly members are limited to six years in office and senators are limited to eight years.
“Interest groups, which of course have no term limits, can wield influence disproportionately in this kind of environment,” says Larry Gerston, a political science professor at San José State University.
Limited terms mean that lawmakers don’t have time to build up the political clout needed to take on powerful lobbyists, experts say. The state’s budget crises have been brokered in the past by longer-serving legislators, but few of today’s politicians wield that sort of power.
“In a term-limited environment, with a lot of politicians who tend to operate out of fear more than foresight,” says Consumer Watchdog’s Mr. Heller, “the institutional memory resides in the lobbyist community.”
