On November 25, California elections officials announced that an initiative to modify California’s legislative term limits law is cleared for circulation. It would not apply to any legislators now in office. It would provide that no future legislator could serve more than 12 years in the legislature. However, all 12 years could be served in one house of the legislature.
Under the current limits, no one may serve more than three 2-year terms in the Assembly, and no one may serve more than two 4-year terms in the State Senate. But, an individual who serves three terms in the Assembly may then serve two terms in the State Senate, for a total of 14 years of legislative service.
The new proposal has substantial financial backing and is very likely to qualify for the November 2010 ballot. Proponents will argue that under the existing term limits law, the office of Assembly speaker is always filled by someone who only has had four years of prior legislative experience, and furthermore that Speakers must leave office after just two years. Proponents argue that having inexperienced Speakers who only serve two years has injured the Assembly.
Proponents also argue that under the current law, Assembly members generally spend so much time concentrating on how they can win a seat in the State Senate when their Assembly service must stop, that they are poor legislators. Under the proposed new type of term limits, generally, the habit of an Assembly member going on to the State Senate would be mostly curtailed.
Will we ever get real election reform on the ballot with proportional representation? Term limits means nothing when it is the same bought and paid for political parties winning in phony prentend elections.
P.R. and nonpartisan A.V.
The term limits mania was due to armies of math MORONS in the 1970s-1980s who were/are brain dead about minority rule gerrymander math.
Half the votes in half the gerrymander districts = about 25 percent indirect minority rule by EVIL leftwing or rightwing statist fanatics – especially in CA — with about ALL of the gerrymander districts being *ONE party – SAFE SEATS*.
1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 Dark Age math from the 1200s and the formation of the English House of Commons
— with such math carried into the British-American colonies in the 1600s and then into the States in 1776 and then into the U.S.A. regime in 1787-1789.
A MINDLESS area fixation — as STONE AGE primitive as the flat earth fixation for centuries.
The proponent of the initiative (1395) is Lance Olson. The proponent of the next 3 (1396-1398) is Lee Olson.
I read (1395) which includes the cover letter to the SOS from Olson, and then went back to the Update page, and saw three more initiatives from Olson. I thought it kind of weird that since you (Richard Winger) said that the first had substantial financial backing, that they would also be proposing 1396, which proposes that no State taxes be used to fund schools.
And on the county level,
San Diegians constitute less than 38% GOP,
yet the same ultra conservative types get
re-elected to the five county board of
[asleep at the wheel] supervisors!
Let the term limits begin ………