Term-Limits Measures Rejected By House Panel Two Bills Targeted Local Officials, Third Would Have Studied Issue

Local elected officials will get no relief from voter-imposed term limits, a House committee decided Monday, and legislators who want full repeal of the limits still have a bargaining chip.

“The people want term limits … and that’s the way it’ll be,” said Rep. Jeff Alltus, R-Hayden.

After more than two hours of testimony, the committee rejected three bills. The first, killed on a 12-8 vote, was the measure sponsored by Alltus and Rep. Jim Stoicheff, D-Sandpoint, to let local voters remove the limits from their local officials if they chose.

North Idaho Reps. June Judd, D-St. Maries, and John Campbell, R-Sandpoint, voted against the bill.

All four opposed the second bill, proposed by Rep. JoAn Wood, R-Rigby, which would have removed term limits from county officials. It died, 16-4.

Supporters argued that when voters enacted term limits, they didn’t mean to target their local county sheriffs or school trustees.

“It’s a problem, but I don’t think either bill takes care of the problem,” Judd said.

The committee then voted 10-10 against House Speaker Bruce Newcomb’s proposal to create an interim legislative committee to study the impact of term limits, a move seen as an alternative to doing nothing on the controversial issue this year.

Lawmakers might have been able to use that committee’s findings to cultivate support for repealing term limits on all local and state elected officials, including legislators.

But removing limits only on county officials, or at least giving local voters the option of removing limits on their own officers, would have eliminated an argument for broader repeal.

Donna Weaver, chairman of Hayden Lake-based Citizens for Term Limits, had endorsed the Stoicheff-Alltus bill, but said after the votes that just keeping all term limits in place is fine with her.

“When you have an open seat, people come forward to fill it,” she said.

During the hearing, Steve Ahrens, president of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, a business group that opposes term limits, questioned why out-of-state donors gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to back term-limits initiatives in Idaho.

“There is a motive somewhere,” he said. “Somebody wants to get incumbent legislators out of office in Idaho.”

But Weaver said, “The agenda overall is to give control of government back to the people who pay for it.”

She told the committee, “We trust the voters, and we want the decision to be theirs - not ours and not the Legislature’s.”

Term limits were first imposed in Idaho by a 1994 initiative that covered everyone from local school boards to Congress. But the congressional part was invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Two subsequent term-limits initiatives have passed, thanks in part to huge cash infusions to the campaigns from Weaver and from out-of-state term-limits groups.

Last year, the Legislature placed an advisory measure on November’s ballot asking voters whether they wanted to keep all of Idaho’s term limits. The all-or-nothing measure won the support of 53 percent of voters.

Said Alltus, “I think if you ask the question, you have to listen to the answer.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.