Term limits debate goes on

CARSON CITY -- Somewhere out there is a longtime Nevada lawmaker who will put his or her career on the line and challenge the constitutional amendment that will bring term limits to the Legislature beginning with the 2011 session.

"There is constant talk among legislators about finding a way to circumvent term limits," said state Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas. "I have no doubt that the majority of legislators want to see term limits reversed. Someone will step forward."

But it won't be Beers, who favors the limits on service.

Two-thirds of Nevadans favor term limits, and Beers believes voters would not look favorably on a lawmaker who wants them overturned.

Fear of voter backlash led Assembly leaders in 2005 to decide against holding a formal vote on then-Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani's proposal to ask voters to repeal the term limit amendment in the 2008 election.

"Leadership was concerned about putting anybody on record who opposed term limits," said Giunchigliani, now a Clark County commissioner.

Because her proposal died, legislators must turn to the courts if they want the amendment overturned before it takes effect.

Whoever ends up challenging term limits probably won't step forward with a legal challenge until the last possible moment: the 2010 election filing period, which begins in May of that year, Beers said.

During candidate filing in May 2010, the secretary of state will be obligated to block lawmakers who have served 12 or more years in their particular house of the Legislature from seeking re-election. Seven state senators and 12 members of the Assembly, including Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, wouldn't be able to seek re-election that fall.

Two years later, in 2012, the secretary of state would be required to reject re-election filings from two current Assembly members and six additional state senators, including state Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, who has held his seat since 1972.

State Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, a critic of term limits, said the result will be a Legislature run by inexperienced lawmakers unable to stand up to veteran state officials and lobbyists.

"The only way you know what is going on (in the Legislature) is with experience," Coffin said. "You have to call what heads of state agencies say into question. We are about to lose a lot of experience."

Giunchigliani agreed.

"The staff and lobbyists would run everything. You would lose historical knowledge and experience," she said. "I believe voters have the right to choose who they want. If they (legislators) aren't representing their districts properly, then they (voters) should fire them."

Coffin said he hasn't decided whether to challenge the term limits amendment in court.

The primary argument in favor of term limits is it brings fresh faces and people with new perspectives into the Legislature, Beers said.

"I think it is a good idea to rotate legislators," he said.

As far as voters being denied a voice, Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, pointed out it was Nevada voters who made that decision by passing the amendment.

"Term limits deny the public the right to choose, but the public voted to deny themselves that choice," said Herzik, a Republican.

Nevada's term limits are the most liberal in the nation. They allow legislators to serve 12 years in each house of the Legislature. A legislator could conceivably serve 24 years: 12 in the state Senate and 12 in the Assembly.

The amendment was approved with 70 percent of the vote in 1994 and 1996.

That decade, 21 states passed term limit legislation. But since then, state legislatures in Utah and Idaho have repealed their term limit laws, and high courts in four other states have declared them unconstitutional.

Some claim the Nevada amendment is unconstitutional.

The state constitution requires amendments be passed "in the same manner" in two consecutive general elections.

The amendment, as passed by voters in 1994, also called for a 12-year limit on the terms of District Court judges and state Supreme Court justices.

Judges fought their inclusion in the proposed amendment, saying their jobs are different from those of other politicians and that experience is particularly valuable to the judiciary. State Supreme Court justices agreed and placed term limits for judges and justices in a measure separate from the amendment to limit lawmakers' terms.

Judges mounted a strong campaign and defeated that measure in the 1996 election, while voters again overwhelmingly supported term limits for legislators.

Giunchigliani contends the state Supreme Court altered the measure approved in 1994 by creating the separate proposal for judges. She questions how term limits for legislators can pass constitutional muster when the measure voters approved in 1994 was not the same as the one they backed in 1996.

Herzik, however, doesn't expect the state Supreme Court will be eager to overturn a voter-approved amendment, especially after Nancy Becker lost re-election, in part, for taking a stance against a publicly approved amendment. In 2003, she was one of six justices who ruled in Guinn v. Legislature that a constitutional mandate to fund education took precedence over a two-thirds vote requirement for lawmakers to raise taxes.

"When you want to repeal term limits, you are basically saying the public was wrong and legislators know what is best," Herzik said.

The state Supreme Court already has weighed in on term limits in a peripheral way.

Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa decided in an opinion issued before the 1996 election that the 12-year term-limit clock would not begin ticking until the 1998 election. Reno resident Marilyn O'Connor challenged that opinion, arguing the limit should apply to legislative service lawmakers had accumulated before the amendment passed.

In 1998, the court upheld the opinion by Del Papa that the term limits would not apply retroactively.

A similar court challenge in 2004 aimed at the re-election bid of state Sen. Mike McGinness, R-Fallon, also failed.

Lorne Malkiewich, administrator of the Legislative Counsel Bureau, said lawmakers might be able to skip a court challenge. They could instead seek a "declaratory opinion" from the courts letting incumbent legislators know before 2010 whether they are eligible to seek re-election.

"They would need to get a court to rule on it and then get it to the Supreme Court," he said. "It is something I know a lot of legislators are looking at. They want to know in advance what they can do."