If the Legislature's broke, fix it

The Montana Legislature has been trying calm introspection lately, in what appears to be a serious effort to come up with possible antidotes for the hyper-partisan warfare that imploded the last legislative session.

Our good citizen legislators even took the step of recruiting a political counselor of sorts from Rutgers University. Alan Rosenthal told a gathering of legislators and others in Helena last week that repealing term limits just might reduce rancor and cynicism in the Statehouse and encourage deliberations that produce better policy.

Last spring's legislative session ended with the evenly divided House and narrowly divided Senate clashing on the state budget. As a result, no spending plan was passed and a special session was required.

We have asserted several times in the past that term limits in the Montana Legislature have been more harmful than helpful to the state's overall political machinery. And we know that veteran lawmakers, many who left office years ago, have a similar view.

They know that eight years and four sessions is a short span for legislators to advance from freshmen to competent contributors to leaders, and then it's all over because of term limits. They talk about how Democratic and Republican lawmakers used to build and develop trust over time in working with one another, and how that trust has been severely eroded, giving way to the pursuit of short-term trench warfare victories.

They are certain that the immovable bureaucracies in Helena have gained substantial influence over the Legislature, with lawmakers forced to increasingly rely on the input of state employees and lobbyists rather than developing their own savvy and institutional memory to judge how state government should work.

There are still ardent term-limit supporters, of course. Sen. Joe Balyeat, R-Bozeman, has backed them since 1992 and argues that increased partisanship across the country is the result of more information and disinformation being available to voters, rather than because of term limits.

His theories are probably partly correct, but still, term limits seem to be a misdirected effort to improve accountability when they may actually diminish competency. Accountability has always been present in the form of the disgusted voter who decides to "throw the bum out."

Automatically throwing out the best and most committed legislators after so little time doesn't make sense in a state like Montana, where legislators leave their jobs and families for a few months every other year. They get sparse compensation and there really isn't much "power" to be achieved for legislators to hang on to their seats at all costs.

We want committed and conscientious lawmakers, and term limits throw away the best along with the rest. And if voters still insist on keeping term limits, we hope they will at least consider extending them.