News

Term-limits law would create major turnover in Oregon's Legislature
It would force out 47 lawmakers by the 2009 session

PETER WONG
Statesman Journal

October 10, 2006

When the 2007 Legislature opens at the Capitol on Jan. 8, at least eight representatives and three senators will be sworn in for the first time.

If Oregon voters pass Measure 45, 35 of the 60 representatives and 12 of the 30 senators on that opening day will be starting their final two years in the Legislature. Among them would be the current House speaker and majority and minority leaders, assuming they are re-elected, and the Senate president pro tem, majority and minority leaders.

Four years from now, under the new term-limits measure on the Nov. 7 ballot, virtually all of the 90 legislators from the 2007 opening day would be gone -- including Senate President Peter Courtney of Salem.

Measure 45 has some similarities to the limits that voters passed in 1992. They would limit representatives to six years, senators to eight years and overall legislative tenure to 14 years -- up from 12 years in the original limits.

Unlike the 1992 limits, Measure 45 would count legislators' previous service against the limits. Sitting legislators would be forced out of office faster than under the original phased-in limits.

"The original limits cleaned the House but not the Senate," said Paul Farago, a Portland acupuncturist and an advocate of term limits then and now.

The original limits forced out 25 representatives in 1998 and 14 more in 2000 but only seven senators overall.

Thirteen more senators would have been forced out in 2002, but the Oregon Supreme Court struck down the limits before the filing deadline for the primary. Most chose not to run, but five were re-elected, including Courtney.

Courtney would not have become the Senate president in 2003 if term limits had remained in effect. He makes no secret of where he stands on Measure 45.

"We wiped out a whole generation of legislators after 1997," said Courtney, now the Legislature's most senior member. "You cannot wipe out a whole generation of experience and be successful."

Prospects this time

A recent independent survey, conducted in late September, indicated that 51 percent of the sampled voters favor of Measure 45, 40 percent are against and the rest are undecided. Farago said that polling commissioned for the Restore Oregon's Term Limits Committee shows 61 percent approval.

The independent-survey results suggest that unlike the 1992 measure, which passed by 70 percent and had no organized opposition, Measure 45 isn't a shoo-in.

"The promises that were made were not fulfilled by what actually happened with term limits," said Pat McCormick, a lobbyist, former legislative staffer and spokesman for Oregonians for Voter Choice.

"Term limits are not a public policy that gave more power to voters. The policy took away the choice of voters to determine who they want to represent them in the Legislature."

But Bill Lunch, the political-science chairman at Oregon State University, said that opponents will need some type of organized campaign to defeat it.

"You cannot beat something with nothing," he said.

"This is a mechanism for ordinary voters to strike out against politicians who remain profoundly unpopular as an occupational class. Even without a campaign against it, the number of voters in favor of it will be less than it was in 1992. But the consequences of term limits have to be communicated; they cannot be assumed."

Oregon was one of the early states affected by the term-limits movement, which during the 1990s succeeded in passing measures in 21 states. The most recent was Nebraska, the nation's only one-chamber legislature.

"The term limits enacted between 1990 and 2000 continue to have a major effect on legislatures around the country," said a recent study by the National Conference of State Legislatures and two other organizations.

Oregon is one of six states that have repealed limits. The courts did it in four states, including Oregon and Washington. The legislatures themselves did it in Idaho, where voters narrowly upheld a legislative repeal, and Utah.

Pro and con

Farago said the rationale remains valid for limits on legislator terms.

"Term limits open the old-boy club to participation by a greater number of Oregonians," he said.

"Elections are not competitive when nearly all incumbents are re-elected; only one incumbent has lost in each of the past two general elections. Term limits contrast that with regular and frequent open-seat elections that bring in new people."

Statistics compiled by the Statesman Journal in 2000 and by the Public Commission on the Oregon Legislature earlier this year suggest that turnover in legislative seats was frequent even before voters approved term limits.

In the Statesman Journal study, 53 House seats and 28 Senate seats changed hands between 1959 and 1969; 57 House seats and 25 Senate seats between 1969 and 1979; and 49 House seats and 25 Senate seats between 1979 and 1989. In the term-limits decade up to 1999, the turnover was 59 House seats and 25 Senate seats.

The commission study, which went back to 1967, found that half the legislators left after six years.

In addition to opening up House seats, Farago said, the number of women in the Oregon Legislature reached a peak in the 2001 session with 22 in the House and eight in the Senate -- one-third of the total legislative membership. Their numbers in the 2005 session dropped back to 25, the same as in 1993 and 1995.

The National Conference on State Legislatures report said that term limits have not enhanced diversity nationally.

"In general, there are not more women or minorities in state legislatures, and there is no substantial difference in legislators' age and occupational backgrounds," the report said.

Term limits originally won support from many Republicans. But in Oregon, after Republicans won a majority in the Senate from 1995 to 2003 and held on to the majority in the House they have had since 1991, many have turned against the idea.

"It is too big of a job, it takes too much knowledge, and having new people here all the time is not good for this process," said Rep. Vicki Berger, a Salem Republican who will be in her third and final term if she is re-elected and Measure 45 passes Nov. 7.

"That's what we found the last time around. You would not fire someone you just trained for a job, but that's what this is about."

What's different

Measure 45 has no effect on the terms of statewide executive officials, although the governor, secretary of state and treasurer still are bound by a limit in the original Oregon Constitution of no more than two consecutive four-year terms.

The 1992 measure combined limits on legislators and statewide executive officials with limits on Oregon members of Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court ruledin 1995 that states could not limit congressional terms.

Because of that combination, though, the Oregon Supreme Court struck down the entire term-limits measure as a violation of the constitutional ban on multiple amendments in a single measure.

Each side has made an issue of the other's sources of campaign money and support.

Farago said that term-limit opponents had access to millions in national contributions against various anti-government ballot measures. But opponents' most recent campaign-finance statement listed total contributions of less than $100,000, $25,000 of it from the political action committee of the Oregon Education Association, which said it did not get that money from a national source.

"We have disclosed fully and have no interest other than a revitalized democracy," Farago said.

McCormick said term-limit proponents transferred $1.3 million into their campaign from U.S. Term Limits, now based in New York, and Americans for Limited Government, based in Chicago. The first group bankrolled the effort to qualify Measure 45 for the ballot, and both are led by Howard Rich, a New York real-estate investor with libertarian views.

"When you have a shadowy figure who is the genesis for the kind of out-of-state investment we have seen in this race and others, people wonder about it in a different way," McCormick said.

"Voters have to ask if this is what Oregonians want. The more they know about it, the more it tends to influence their point of view."

McCormick said that opposition to term limits is broad and includes groups such as the League of Women Voters.

Farago said that voters should draw conclusions from the organization of the opposition committee by lobbyists.

"Term limits for legislators equal term limits for lobbyists," he said. "Every termed-out lawmaker is a terminated relationship with a lobbyist."

"People who have a genuine concern about Oregon's legislative process know that term limits did not deliver what Howard Rich and other proponents had promised," he said. "Term limits have been putting critical decisions about Oregon's future in the hands of novices who are unprepared to deal with them."