Plan Lets Communities Vote On Local Term Limits Proposal Aims To Head Off Any State Effort To Lift Limits

The group pushing a term-limits initiative on the November ballot also plans to lobby the Idaho Legislature to let communities vote on whether they want to keep limits for local offices.

The effort will be aimed at heading off any move by lawmakers to repeal term limits set by a 1994 voter initiative, Donna Weaver, initiative campaign chairman, said Friday.

“All kinds of noises are being made about repealing those limits,” said Weaver, a Hayden Lake resident.

She said Beau Parent, who coordinated the 1994 initiative campaign, will run the lobbying effort. “That’s his responsibility, to hold their feet to the fire and suggest to them it would be totally inappropriate to repeal their own limits on themselves.”

Idahoans overwhelmingly approved an initiative in 1994 that sought to limit terms of office for elected officials from school boards up to Congress. But a subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decision voided the congressional portion of the initiative, leaving the state with limits only for state and local officials.

Last year, Gov. Phil Batt said what’s left of the law is “probably a mistake,” but he made no move to try to repeal it.

A bill was introduced in the Legislature last session to repeal term limits for school board members. Former Rep. Herm Steger, representing the Idaho school boards association, said school board members were the only unpaid officials targeted by the limits. But the bill never got out of committee.

Weaver, who made a swing through Boise on Friday with Paul Jacobs, director of Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Term Limits Inc., said if changes are made, they should come at the behest of local voters.

The initiative her group is promoting this year would push for congressional term limits in two ways: By requiring Idaho’s congressional delegation to support a term-limits amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and by requiring state legislators to call for a constitutional convention to add such an amendment.

An amendment would require ratification by three-quarters of the states.

Under the initiative, elected officials who fail to go along would have warning notices printed by their names on the ballot. Candidates would be required to sign pledges supporting the effort or face the ballot warnings.

Idaho Attorney General Al Lance has raised questions over the constitutionality of the ballot warnings.

, DataTimes