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Term Limits

As John said yesterday, Michigan joins California, New York and Pennsylvania as the only states with full-time legislatures. John also highlighted the work of the Detroit Free Press’ Henry Woloson, who is advocating scaling Michigan’s legislature back to part-time. Woloson isn’t alone—with the passage of a ballot initiative crafted by a father-son pair of attorneys, a part-time Michigan legislature could be a reality. 

Allan and Gregory Schmid are in the process of collecting the nearly 372,000 signatures they need to place an initiative on the November ballot that will limit Michigan's legislative session to no more than half of a year and cut members salaries in half. The aim is to return the body to a group of citizen-legislators who live in their districts instead of representatives who live distantly in the capital.

With salaries of $79,650, Michigan has one of the highest paid legislatures; under the proposed amendment, that salary would be slashed to $40,000 and members would be docked for being absent. The state's governor would also be required to submit a balanced budget on time.

The Schmids are no strangers to Michigan's I&R process; Allan wrote initiatives to cap property taxes that were passed in the 1970s, as well as legislative term limits that were passed in 1992. His son Greg is heading this initiative to allow citizens to take even further control of their state legislature, and he has also written an amendment that would require all tax hikes be brought to a vote.

Civil service was never intended to be a full-time job; indeed, most of the founders never imagined that government would busy itself with so much of the people’s business that legislating required all of the legislator's time. Term limits are one tool to contain this problem; let’s hope this initiative is Michigan's next tool.

Michigan is one of only four states in the country that has a full-time legislature. If you live in Michigan, however, you’re probably aware that our lawmakers aren’t making the best use of their excessive time in Lansing. Consider this fine observation by Henry Woloson, in the Detroit Free Press:

“The 46 states with part-time legislatures managed to pass their required budgets on schedule. Michigan's 148 full-time lawmakers, with extensive recesses and vacations, needed 30-day emergency budget extensions, midnight madness sessions, and special-interest coordinated tax sales to produce the budget mess that is likely to be at least partially repealed.”

Woloson is leading a drive to switch Michigan’s legislature back to part time, saying that the current system wastes money and doesn’t get much done that’s useful.

Naturally, some citizens continue to support a full-time Senate and House (though we may suppose legislators support the status quo at a higher ratio than do the citizens who pay them). And the legislature needs sufficient time to govern the nation’s eighth most populous state.

But when northern regions of the state have unemployment rates approaching 9%, national credit ratings have been downgraded, roads are in uniformly poor condition and few graduates think they have any good reason to stay, it’s clear that the legislature hasn’t been part of any solution.

There may still be some reason to keep things the way they are, however: this column from the Jackson Citizen-Patriot has an amusing take on the situation.