������Ƶ

It’s curious that so many of the folks pushing for more ethics and transparency in state government oppose a proposed reform that the citizenry seems to love: legislative term limits.

Opponents cite two main reasons, one of which is flat-out wrong and the other open to debate.

The first is that voters frequently evict incumbent lawmakers, rendering term limits unnecessary.

House Judiciary Chair David Tarnas echoed that refrain last session when he single-handedly killed a term limits measure. He pointed to a League of Women Voters analysis showing that from 2012 to 2022, 56% of the Senate and 65% of the House turned over.

But a closer analysis of the same data by Civil Beat found that losing reelection bids accounted for only 26 of the 72 departures of legislators during that period.

Thanks to the power of incumbency, no one should equate Hawaii election results to term limits.

The second reason often cited by opponents is that a less experienced Legislature would shift more power to unelected bureaucrats and — gasp — lobbyists. 

The former is hard to argue, although a little less meddling in the workings of state government by entrenched legislators could sometimes be a good thing. (Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz’s arm-twisting to build a $100 million-plus first responders’ training center in his district comes to mind.)

But the latter is less clear-cut. Analysis of the results of legislative term limits in other states finds that special interests did not always gain influence — and sometimes lost it — when lawmakers could not serve as long as they damn well pleased.

A Common Refrain

If legislators are term-limited, lobbyists will be super-charged. The notion pops up everywhere, including last year’s Civil Beat candidate Q&As.

“Lobbyists and donors are not term-limited,” said Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, a nine-year veteran of the Legislature. “In states with legislative term limits, these unelected individuals often end up as the keepers of institutional knowledge and influence.”

Political analyst Neil Milner put it this way in a Civil Beat column last year: “When you evict the experts, you create a vacuum of knowledge. And, as it turns out, this vacuum is likely filled with experienced mentors like lobbyists and special interest groups.”

Before the Commission to Improve Standards and Conduct — also known as the Foley Commission — narrowly voted to recommend legislative term limits last year, member Robert Harris explained his opposition.

“You would be looking at a new elected group of individuals that are probably going to be more reliant on trying to find campaign funds and therefore going to increase the influence of special interests,” said Harris, executive director of the State Ethics Commission.

Not So Fast …

Those takes don’t always square with analyses of states that have had legislative term limits long enough to assess the actual effects on political influence.

Twenty-one states enacted legislative term limits from 1990 to 2000, but six repealed the limits and actual impacts on legislatures didn’t begin until 1996 at the earliest.

One of the early studies, released in 2001, surveyed lobbyists in five term-limited states and the results supported what term limit opponents have claimed would happen in Hawaii: Over 60% felt that special interest groups in general had increased their influence, and almost half said their own group had gained influence.

Turnover, whether induced by term limits or otherwise, disrupts the relationships that some lobbyists leverage to influence legislative processes.

As term limits took effect in more states, later studies had more data to analyze.

There was good and bad news for lobbyists in a 2004 book by Thad Kousser,

While lobbyists acknowledged getting to write more bills themselves, Kousser cited one California capitol observer who said, “Lobbyists used to know all the players; they’d been through it before. Now, there’s a whole new set of players.”

A of the influence of special interests “failed to uncover any statistical difference … in term-limited and non term-limited states.”

By 2021, a found that many lobbyists considered themselves less influential in term-limited legislatures.

“Although legislators in high-turnover assemblies may be less knowledgeable, such turnover, whether induced by term limits or otherwise, disrupts the relationships that some lobbyists leverage to influence legislative processes,” the authors wrote.

“Veteran lobbyists in term-limited states express frustration over having to maintain relationships with and educate new lawmakers continuously,” the study found. “These challenges are compounded by the fact that freshmen legislators are often hesitant to meet with lobbyists because they view them as corrupt.”

Don’t Hold Your Breath

The varying aspects of legislative term limits that strengthen and hinder lobbyists would likely “cancel each other out” in Hawaii, said Colin Moore, a political scientist with the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization.

“Term limits won’t dramatically change the power of lobbyists,” he said.

And even the empowerment of bureaucrats would “likely be muted,” Moore said, “because the 16-year limit is long enough to allow legislators to learn the ‘tricks of the trade.’”

A combined 16-year limit on legislative service in the House and/or Senate is what the Foley Commission proposed in after initially considering an eight-year limit.

Commission members, who proposed myriad other legislative reforms, weren’t enthusiastic about pushing term limits at all and said they were doing so because polls have shown widespread support for them.

A 2018 Civil Beat poll found that 70% of likely voters statewide supported legislative term limits, while only 14% opposed them.

Civil Beat surveyed legislators themselves last session and found them surprisingly open to term limits. Nearly half of House members and more than a third of senators supported term limits, and there were enough undecideds in both chambers to give such a proposal a shot at passing if votes were actually allowed.

Even veteran lawmakers could continue serving for 16 more years.

They never are, because committee chairs regularly kill term limit bills without even allowing committee votes.

Before voting on their term limits proposal at their meeting last October, Foley Commission members acknowledged the roadblock that legislative leaders present. Sitting legislators would have to be “grandfathered in,” the members said, for any such measure to be “politically feasible.”

That means that if the Legislature and then voters approved a constitutional amendment for legislative term limits, even veteran lawmakers could continue serving for 16 more years.

Obviously, legislative term limits are far from the timeliest avenue to much-needed state government reform. But they do merit fact-based debate unhindered by false assumptions.