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Other Issues
Term Limits & Legislative Process

It is no exaggeration to say that term limitation continues to be one of the most popular ideas in American politics today, even though the issue has been on the national agenda for more than a decade. Large majorities of Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, whites and nonwhites, men and women, all support term limits. At the same time, one of the least popular aspects of the North Carolina General Assembly is its apparent inability to conduct its business in a timely and responsible fashion.

Why Term Limits Are Needed

In political campaigns, the advantages of incumbency include government-paid staffs, access to media and information, and the lawmaking power that attracts contributions from interest groups. These advantages make it extremely difficult for challengers to win congressional or legislative seats.

Some opponents argue that the revolutionary 1994 elections proved that campaigns were sufficiently competitive. But even as partisan control of Congress and many state legislatures shifted from Democrats to Republicans, the vast majority of GOP gains occurred in open seats where a Democratic incumbent chose not to run for reelection. Over 90 percent of all congressional incumbents who ran for reelection won in the 1994 elections. In North Carolina, 81 percent of General Assembly incumbents won.

Term limits would weaken the power of special interests. So many members would be rotating in and out that it would be harder for lobbyists to do business. Thus most special-interest groups vehemently oppose term limits. A related argument is that longtime incumbency fuels government growth. The problem here is not back-room deals by lobbyists, but instead the routine efforts of bureaucrats to indoctrinate lawmakers about the merits of government programs. Studies of both Congress and state legislatures by the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, and the Locke Foundation have shown that, at least to some degree, longtime lawmakers are more likely to support higher taxes and larger budgets than are political newcomers.

Reforming The Legislative Process

Political observers have long recognized North Carolina’s lack of formal length limits on its legislative sessions as unique in the Southeast, damaging to the process, and a form of incumbency protection. The legislature is losing good, serious lawmakers of both parties because of the growing length of sessions, the workload between the sessions, and the extent to which deliberations have been frustrating or infuriating. The problem reached a crisis point in 2001 when the regular session of North Carolina’s “part-time legislature” lasted from January until December.

“There’s a hundred people in my district who could do a better job than myself, but they won’t run,” one senator told The Winston-Salem Journal. “And the reason they won’t run is because it takes so much time.” Another lawmaker chimed in that “to call the legislature a citizens’ legislature in this day and age is a joke.”

There is disagreement about what this should mean. Some believe that it is time to throw in the towel on a part-time legislature and go the California route: 1) make state lawmaking a full-time job, 2) pay legislators a lot more, and 3) have them stay in session much of every year. But this course of action would be disastrous. Not only would it restrict legislative office to those willing to make politics a career, it would also further centralize power in Raleigh and expand the scope of government. The longer lawmakers have to legislate, the more their legislation will stray from constitutional moorings and insert the state in areas it has no business regulating. States with full-time legislatures tend to spend and tax more than other states do.

Goals

To restore and preserve part-time citizen decisionmaking at the state and local levels, do the people’s business in a reasonable period of time, promote electoral competition as much as possible, and make sure electoral office is open to folks other than retirees or the wealthy.

Recommendations

1. State lawmakers should impose term limits on themselves and other elected state officials. A reasonable term limit for the General Assembly might be six years in the House and eight years in the Senate. For statewide elected offices, a reasonable policy would be two four-year terms (in a lifetime, not just consecutively). Local officials such as city mayors, city council members, school board members, and county commissioners should also enact term limits.
2. Set firm lengths on sessions. North Carolina should adopt the Virginia approach of 60 days for long sessions and 30 days for short ones.
3. Set firm limits on the introduction of bills. Some critics of session lengths think that they would only exacerbate the tendency for lots of unread (and often shoddy) bills to be considered at the last minute. The real problem is that there are far too many bills introduced in the first place. The North Carolina House once had a modest limit, but let's have a tough one: let each member introduce up to three per session.
4. Make legislative deliberations interactive. The technology already exists to wire committee rooms and the chambers and provide a feed via a World Wide Web site. Let lawmakers “attend” committee meetings via the Web, so those who live far from Raleigh don't have to waste their time (and the taxpayers’ money) traveling. This would have the huge side benefit of allowing all North Carolinians to witness their government in action through a C-SPAN type service on the Internet, with excerpts broadcast on cable access.
5. Reform the legislative staff. There are many fine professionals who work at the General Assembly, but the staffing arrangements were designed for a different era of one-party rule. A significant percentage of staffers should be dedicated to the House and Senate majority and minority caucuses. This would shift some of the workload off of members and speed up sessions and deliberations.
6. Increase hourly legislator pay. Notice the modifier. The best way to pay lawmakers better is not to increase spending but to reduce the hours they spend on the job. It would be reasonable to increase salaries of state lawmakers, which are taxable, while reducing expense payments and eliminating “per-diem” allowances.

To view higher quality graphs, download Agenda 2004 [560KB Acrobat].