New Book on Maine Term Limits Reveals “Unintended Consequences
Contact: Richard Powell, (207) 581-1795, George Manlove, (207) 581-3756
ORONO, Maine — When Maine voters approved term limits in a 1993 referendum designed to replace what some considered professional politicians with more rank-and-file citizens, they set into motion a series of related changes with some unanticipated consequences.
Voters interrupted or ended some lengthy political careers, but it is clear more than a decade later that voters also diminished the political power and efficiency of the Maine Legislature.
Three current or former University of Maine political science professors are authors of a newly published book, “Changing Members: The Maine Legislature in the Era of Term Limits” (Lexington Books, 2004), which assesses the effects of term limits in Maine.
The collaborators are Richard J. Powell, assistant professor of political science, Kenneth T. Palmer, professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Political Science, and Matthew C. Moen, former professor and chair of the political science department and now dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Dakota. The book takes a non-partisan look at the impact of term limits.
It is an analysis based primarily on a survey of members of the Maine Legislature, plus several dozen interviews with legislators, staff, executive branch officials and lobbyists. The authors each have published articles or books on a variety of political science issues, including Congress, the Presidency, Federalism and Maine politics.
The research is particularly significant, the authors note, because Maine is the first state in the nation where term limits actually forced members out of both chambers of its state legislature. Lessons from Maine may be applicable to the other 16 states operating under term limits.
One of those lessons is that term limits can easily “gum up the works,” Palmer says of the tendency for the Legislature to operate less efficiently under the restrictions.
Unless a Maine legislator switches chambers or sits out an election cycle, a member is ineligible to run for reelection after serving four consecutive terms in the Maine House or Senate. This keeps new and largely inexperienced faces coming and going in Augusta, with what Powell calls “unintended consequences.”
One of those consequences is an abbreviated learning curve for new legislators, who must very quickly learn their way around the institution. They need to make a mark — particularly if they have leadership ambitions. They sometimes are impatient with the give-and-take of the legislative process.
Moen observes that new legislators often reintroduce legislation rejected in previous sessions, often unaware that such bills already had been considered. From 1995 to 2000, for instance, the number of bills introduced in the Maine Legislature rose by 43 percent. As each bill must be researched by the legislative staff and prepared for formal introduction, the redundancy consumes valuable time and resources, can extend the length of legislative sessions and, additionally, can distract legislators from more pressing legislative matters, according to the authors.
Perhaps more significant is the loss of seasoned legislators, which effectively increases the political power of other policymakers, such as executive branch officials or legislative staff. Elected officials, the authors suggest, seem to have ceded at least some political power to these non-elected officials, who often serve, through necessity, as the institutional memories for legislators.
While Moen, Powell and Palmer describe many of the interrelated consequences in detail, they also explain efforts of the Maine Legislature to adjust to this new political conundrum.
In fact, a theme of the book is how legislators have attempted to adapt to the term limits era in a manner consistent with Maine’s participatory political culture and values, avoiding steps such as limits on bill introductions per member.
Ironically, the authors note, the relative success of Maine legislators’ efforts to adapt their institution to term limits almost makes it harder for term limit opponents to persuade voters to repeal them, since many of the difficulties are less apparent to the public.
In addition, many legislators are still reluctant to campaign against term limits, since it was the voters who adopted them in the first place.
“Changing Members: The Maine Legislature in the Era of Term Limits” is available through Amazon.com.