Effects of term limits in Maine: more power to the executive branch.

Maine voters approved legislative term limits in November of 1993 and implemented them in 1996. Under the law, members of both the House of Representatives and the state Senate are limited to four consecutive two-year terms. After that, they must either run for a different office, or take a

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Unfortunately, term limits has resulted in a churning of leadership that greatly weakens the Legislature as a body relative to the executive branch. In the Senate, turnover rates have increased from 20 percent prior to term limits to 30-40 percent. That may not sound like a drastic change, but it heavily impacts legislative leadership. As the Legislature grappled with the difficult issue of tax reform the past two years, both committee chairs (Maine has joint standing committees with House and Senate chairs) were running a committee for the first time. The next speaker of the House will almost certainly be the fifth speaker in a row to serve only a single two-year term.

This turnover means we now have few legislators with extensive experience in the Legislature or any experience in leadership. While advocates say term limits bring "fresh ideas" into government, the fact is rapid changeover in legislative leadership makes it difficult for legislators to effectively advance their ideas. Presiding officers and caucus leaders spend half of their two-year terms trying to learn how to function in their new roles. Even then, they have far less clout than before term limits because everyone knows they will be gone in a year.

Prior to term limits, the legislature had senior members on every committee who provided institutional memory and were acknowledged as experts in their area. Today, fewer members spend many years on the same committee and the best legislators change positions often as they jockey to rise in leadership. Unfortunately, that means that the most knowledgeable and experienced people in a committee room are often state employees and lobbyists, not legislators.

As a result of these changes in legislative leadership and experience, more power is now wielded by the executive branch, the bureaucracy and lobbyists. Today, representatives of state agencies have control of facts and information. There are few lawmakers who can hold them accountable for prior actions or promises. The strongest institutional memory available to committees comes from their non-partisan legislative staff, but that staff's role is supposed to be supportive, helping them understand an issue, rather than proscriptive, recommending actions. The result is a transfer of power to two sets of bureaucrats, those who work for the agencies and those who work for the committee.