The Nevada Sagebrush

Taylor R. Anderson

Twelve years is the amount of time a public official can stay in the same office in Nevada. It sounds like a long time. It felt like an eternity for me from first through 12th grade. But for those who we entrust with our state government, it is as quick as a blink of the eye.

The people of the state of Nevada passed an initiative to establish term limits in 1996. This imposed a 12-year limit on the time both state and local elected officials could spend in a particular office. The rationale behind this was that these elected officials become corrupt or ineffective the longer they stayed in office and less attuned to their constituency.

I’m sure most have heard the counter-argument to these term limits: that they vest the power in unelected bureaucrats and lobbyists instead of the people with the name on the ballot. Or that term limits are superfluous because elections are essentially term limits. You might even hear the crazy idea that it takes more than a few years to learn how to operate a state.

For all these reasons and more, term limits are bad; however, the most important reason will be seen in the next year. This last session some of the greats of the state legislature such as John Carpenter (R), Bernie Anderson (D), Sheila Leslie (D) and Barbara Buckley (D) will be forced to retire due to term limits and are now essentially banned from the State Assembly after decades of loyal service.

In the next regular session in 2011, the state is expected to have a budget hole of around $1.5 to $2 billion. But instead of having many seasoned legislators who are dedicated, smart and knowledgeable, 12 out of 42 of the assemblypersons will be first-term rookies.

Term limits also have the side effect of limiting the term of speaker to only one, maybe two sessions. This is true for the presumptive speaker and current Assembly Majority Leader John Oceguera (D-AD16). Because of term limits he will only have one session in one of the most powerful positions in the state of Nevada. This could lead to a constant power vacuum in the future, as people simply wait for the speaker to get out of their way.

Additionally, the many problems of term limits in Nevada are compounded with the combination of a 120-day session and a biannual legislature. The amount of time a legislator spends in Carson City in regular session throughout their possible term is 720 days, or 24 months. This means that the maximum time a legislator can spend actually legislating, and not just going to interim meetings, is about two years.

I don’t know about you, but I’d like the people who control the future of this state to have a little more than just two years of on-the-job training before they are running the place.

While term limits may have been the will of the people in 1996, I find them to be an overreach on the institution of representative democracy. If the people think that an elected official has been in office too long, they should simply vote him or her out. One of the many unintended consequences of limiting the people’s choice on the ballot is that we are in a perpetual state of infantile government. With all the problems our state is facing, we need all the experienced help we can get.

Taylor R. Anderson is a political science major who co-hosts The VoiceBox on Wolf Pack Radio 1700AM from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays. Reach him at perspectives@nevadasagebrush.com.

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