SUDDES: The real problem with the Ohio General Assembly? Term-limits

Those nifty tax-breaks for fat cats, and property-tax abatements for developers didn’t trickle into the pockets and purses of ordinary Ohioans. Meanwhile, our ADD-wracked General Assembly is moving heaven and earth to craft best-in-class fetters for LGBTQ Ohioans. That’ll boost your savings account!

The real problem – and yes, it’s counter-intuitive to many voters – is the term-limits Ohioans imposed on the General Assembly in 1992. It limits a person to eight consecutive years in the Ohio House or state Senate respectively. Then an incumbent must win a seat in the other chamber – a House lame-duck for the Senate, a Senate lame-duck for the House – or leave the Statehouse altogether for four years before seeking to return to his or original General Assembly chamber.

This makes for policy-churning whiplash and legislators more focused on their next jobs rather than Ohio’s problems. Term-limits also further boost the strength of Ohio’s governors because their power to appoint friendly legislators to state jobs can bolster an ex-state legislators’ pension.

A powerful side-effect, the weakening of checks ‘n balances: A state bureaucracy whose institutional knowledge – a $5 phrase for “self-preservation” – is far greater than a constant-churn legislature can muster.

Term-limits first and foremost drew on Ohioans’ disgust at Congress; the 1992 term-limits package that Ohioans passed included term-limits on members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate; that drew a “yes” vote of 66%. (Term-limits on the General Assembly drew a “yes” vote of 68%.) Courts overturned term-limits on Congress.

Part of voters’ frustration about Congress and the legislature was (a) thumb-twiddling in Congress (sound familiar?), and (b), in Columbus, the perception that longtime Democratic House Speaker Vern Riffe – he was to serve for 20 years – was too powerful for Ohio’s good. (That’s pretty funny coming from partisan Republicans who are now even more ... assertive ... in how they run Ohio.)

What’s more, the computerized perfection applied to drawing Ohio’s congressional and Statehouse districts means that a candidate with the “right” party affiliation – if she or he wins her or his party’s nomination – doesn’t need to worry about winning Novembers’ general election.

Little wonder, then, that Republican primaries for Ohio House and Senate seats can become little more than Atilla-the-Hun Lookalike Contests. After all, who needs to craft complicated relief from crushing property taxes when so many campaign-trail cheap-shots beckon – against, say, Ohio residents who are brown or black (especially those born outside the United States), or Ohio’s transsexual citizens?

For many Ohioans, it’s likely very hard to agree that General Assembly term-limits have proven to be a disaster; that seems counter-intuitive. Still, if an Ohioan wants legislators to be on the lookout, from Day One in Columbus, for that next job or a gubernatorial appointment, term-limits guarantee that.

But if a voter wants a legislator to ardently work, as a public-interest state representative, for the needs and hopes of roughly 119,000 fellow Ohioans (or, if a state senator, for roughly 362,000), General Assembly term-limits have got to go. Otherwise, nothing will change in Ohio. Nothing.