Term Limits - The Sequel Bill Calls For Another Statewide Vote On Law Passed By Initiative In ‘94

Forget keeping the popular, longtime sheriff, the dedicated school trustee or the county prosecutor who’s the only lawyer in the county.

If Idahoans want to dump local term limits, they’ll have to do away with limits on state legislators, too.

That was the decision of the House State Affairs Committee on Tuesday, as it killed legislation proposed by Rep. Jeff Alltus, R-Hayden, in favor of a bill by House Majority Caucus Chairman John Tippets, R-Bennington.

Rep. Jim Stoicheff, D-Sandpoint, warned, “Throw someone off a bridge - if you tie a cement weight around his neck he’ll probably drown. We just tied a cement weight around the necks of the local officials.”

Alltus’ bill, written by the group that pushed the successful term limits initiative in Idaho in 1994, would have allowed individual communities to vote to exempt their local officials from the limits. It wouldn’t change state legislators’ term limits.

Tippets’ bill calls for a statewide advisory vote on whether to keep all term limits, state and local. If voters choose to dump term limits, it would be up to the Legislature to revoke the law.

Idaho voters enacted a sweeping initiative in 1994 that limited terms for everyone from Congress down to school board. But the U.S. Supreme Court said states can’t put limits on Congress, so the state was left with limits only for state and local offices.

“I don’t think the people had any doubt in their minds. They voted to include state legislators and other state officials right in there with the feds. That’s why I liked Alltus’ bill better,” Stoicheff said.

Donna Weaver of Hayden Lake, Idaho campaign chairwoman of Citizens for Federal Term Limits, told the committee that term limits are overwhelmingly popular in the large population centers that swing elections. But lightly populated counties have had problems with them.

“Clearly, if this Legislature cares a whit about fairness to voters in less populated communities, it will pass HB647 allowing for votes on local offices to be taken locally,” she said.

House Majority Leader Bruce Newcomb said when he voted for term limits, he was thinking of Congress. “I wanted to get rid of Rostenkowski and I wanted to get rid of Ted Kennedy,” he said.

But Newcomb said he thought Idahoans were taken in by a campaign pushed by out-of-state interests, which provided much of the funding for the 1994 initiative campaign.

“If I thought this was really grassroots, then I’d say no, don’t touch the thing,” he said. But Newcomb said Idaho voters need to be asked the question again, without Congress included.

“We considered all the options and thought this was the fairest thing,” Tippets said.

The vote was 11-8 to pass Tippets’ bill and send it to the full House for a vote. The committee then voted 12-7 against a motion to pass Alltus’ bill.

Rep. June Judd, D-St. Maries, voted for Tippets’ bill instead of Alltus’, which she said was “confusing.”

“Why not clear it up in one year?” she said. “I’ve had people over and over say to me, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that it meant the local officials.’ They thought it meant the national ones.”

Judd suggested that Alltus’ bill could be amended to allow each legislative district to vote on whether it wanted term limits for its local legislators, but Weaver said that would be impractical because all legislators should face the same limits.

“There were legitimate arguments on both sides. It’s just a matter of opinion, really. It was a good fight,” Alltus said.

, DataTimes