It’s a debate that is a few decades old: should politicians have limited terms? A recent Baltimore Sun editorial came out against the idea, citing the toll term limits take on effective legislating and their anti-democratic nature. On this issue I’m ambivalent. I don’t see any evidence that term limits are effective at making legislatures function better (which I define as limiting spending and taxes) but I don’t see that they are very harmful, either.                 

Term limits are certainly no panacea. They won’t solve all – or even many – of the problems facing our government. They would, indeed, lead to more turnover in legislators as legislative candidate Ed Priola states in a letter to the Sun’s editors. Is turnover good in and of itself? What if this turnover produces no change in how legislators act?

There is some evidence that the more entrenched legislators become the more they vote to increase spending and raise taxes. But there is also evidence that such turnover hurts the ability of legislatures to govern effectively. The idea that term limits will produce good government is clearly contradicted by the example of California, where the legislature and governor have term limits and yet the state is a complete fiscal wreck. But it’s not as if term limits caused the problems California is facing.

The argument that term limits are anti-democratic is pretty flat, in my opinion. Our nation isn’t a democracy and the Founders didn’t want us to be one. There are a variety of limitations on direct citizen participation in government. Term limits would simply be one more.

In the end, I really don’t have a firm opinion on term limits. Those who support them as some sort of effective tool in reforming government seem off-base to me. But those criticizing them as an anti-democratic tool that will ruin our government seem equally off-base. If people want limited government, there are far more effective proposals (super-majority requirements for tax increase votes in legislatures, for instance) that should be pursued. Term limits may be helpful in reducing the size of government, but focusing on imposing them could take away energy from enacting other things that would do much more to restore the proper size of government in this state.