Let's Consider Limitations on Term Limits

Term limits must go. The experiment from the 1990s has now been around long enough to prove a failure and after last week’s city election in Houston, no further proof is necessary. Almost every shred of interest has been extracted from city elections and before it gets any worse, Bill White should use his considerable political capital to do away with one of the culprits.

I didn’t always feel this way. In fact, I’ve sort of been all over the map on the issue. Since I didn’t trust the right wing ideologues who were the original backers, I opposed term limits for city officials. But then, after the referendum was passed and term limits became a reality, I started thinking it was a good way to shake things up and inject new blood into the system. That was certainly true in the beginning but now, after more than 15 years of term limits, we can see that the bad clearly outweighs the good.

Let’s not forget where the idea originated. For years, blocked from federal power, Republicans campaigned on the need for congressional term limits. After they won the House majority in 1994, suddenly there was no longer a need for congressional term limits. Imagine that!

But despite the hypocrisy they demonstrated after assuming power, the idea had become firmly rooted in Republican circles and activists started seizing opportunities to push term limits wherever and whenever they could. Houston was one such place and it proved to be the perfect incubator.

In the early ’90s, most members of the City Council and Mayor Kathy Whitmire had been around for years. The whole “new blood” argument was a big seller and the measure was passed and then strengthened to take away any loopholes.

Now what we have, for all intents and purposes, are six-year terms for all city office holders. An incumbent has not been defeated since 1999. Most incumbents face only token or no opposition regardless of performance. That seems completely counter to the original purpose of clearing out dead weight. Now dead weight is basically ensured a spot until three terms have expired.

Because everyone knows they will be there for only a limited period of time and have very little inherent power to begin with, members of council have been effectively neutered.

The mayor still has to get seven council members to go along with him, but that’s not terribly difficult since the mayor of Houston has extraordinary inherent powers — only New York’s mayor has more — and every road at Houston City Hall leads through the mayor’s office.

It has made “go along to get along” a mandate at City Hall and while that might sometimes be a good thing, other times it’s not.

People should want members of city council to operate with a certain degree of independence and under the current system, that’s strongly discouraged and next to impossible.

Term limits also create a sort of artificial democracy whereby openings are created for city office not because someone is retiring or is doing a bad job and needs to be replaced but because of an arbitrary time limit that folks back in the ’90s decided would make everything better.

At first, it created a lot of interest and enthusiasm but all that has clearly waned. Now, after suffering through one of the most boring elections in the history of man and seeing a lower degree of interest than many thought imaginable, it’s time for term limits to become term limited.

(Originally published by Examiner Newspaper Group)