Higher-education lobbyists are cautiously optimistic about the consequences of the Oregon Supreme Court’s decision to nullify the state’s term limit law.
The Oregon Supreme Court ruled Friday that Measure 3, the 1992 ballot-initiative Oregon voters passed to create the term limit law, broke state statutes by making more than one unrelated change at once to the Oregon constitution. The law restricted House members to three two-year terms and senators to two four-year terms, and placed a 12-year limit on state legislative service.
Life without term limits will not be any easier for groups who represent higher education interests in Salem, Oregon Students Association executive director Joelle Lester said.
“When lobbying someone who is new, we could have the opportunity to win them over and have them be a champion of our programs, while more experienced folks may already have their own ideas,” she said.
The court’s decision will allow up to 25 members of the two houses who would have exceeded the term limits to run for elections this year. Also, members who were previously ineligible because of term limits may run for office again.
The ruling will supply the Oregon Legislature with more seasoned lawmakers and a longer institutional memory, said Tim Young, one of two student representatives of the State Board of Higher Education.
“Term limits created turnover and created a transient nature in the Legislature,” he said. The ruling “should change the culture of Salem from a bus station to people sticking around and caring about issues.”
Well-seasoned legislators are getting hard to come by in Oregon, said Grattan Kerans, director of government relations for the Oregon University System — the group of seven state universities. Kerans left behind 17 years of legislative experience in Salem to work for OUS.
“We had a situation that the person with six months experience was the second-in-command one day, and they were in charge the next day,” he said. “That is not a good way to run a railroad.”
Young said the abolition of term limits will reduce the power and influence of professional, well-funded lobbyists on lawmakers.
“It is harder to manipulate you if you have been around for 15 years,” Young said.
One junior legislator agrees. The average junior lawmaker does not have the experience to make decisions on a wide range of subjects, said Rep. Phil Barnhart, D-Eugene. To compensate, the legislator must quickly find information either from colleagues or, more commonly, from lobbyists and civil servants in the legislative branch. Both groups sometimes have their own agendas, Barnhart said.
“If you’re dealing with an area you don’t know much about, you may have to take a vote primarily on other people’s information,” he said. “And that’s not a good position to be in.”
Supporters of term limits have vowed to carry on the fight. The group Oregon Term Limits announced it will start collecting signatures for another, less restrictive, term limit initiative.
Regardless of the future of term limits in Oregon, the demise of Measure 3 can still be seen as a victory for some. Kerans felt the measure was too restrictive and went far beyond other state term limit laws. The 12-year ceiling on state-wide public office created a “death penalty” atmosphere in Salem.
Kerans said that Measure 3’s message was “a person with 12 years’ experience is dangerous to the public welfare and toxic to the process, so we must bar them
for life.”