Governed Want Their Government Back : Proposition 140: Far from being a big-city power play, this is a grass-roots effort.

Belying its press-bestowed name, the “Schabarum” initiative began with Lee Phelps, a tax activist from Aptos. And far from the claim that Proposition 140 is a “downtown Los Angeles power-grab,” it was born at a meeting in Rocklin, near Sacramento, on May 25, 1989, attended by 20 or so conferees, mostly from Northern California and of the Democratic, Republican, American Independent and Libertarian parties. No big names, just a gathering in search of a solution to the inaccessibility of government to common citizens.

Pete Schabarum was brought on board only later, as supporters of term limitation realized that without sufficient funding, no measure, no matter how popular, was likely to make it to the ballot.

The original framers of the proposition wanted a single-term limit in each office, but knew that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to sell to the electorate. Their paramount concern was to develop a measure that could provide a vehicle for ending the era of the professional politician, removed from his constituency, and for restoring citizen government. The authors of Proposition 140 also ask for a limit to legislators’ spending in order to limit their electoral advantage.

Critics of term limitation also assert that it takes several terms to learn the job, and that we will lose the benefit of experienced legislators. The experience of Cleta Deathridge Mitchell, one of the key figures in the recent passage of Oklahoma’s term limitation law, speaks to this point. As a freshman Democratic member of the Oklahoma Legislature, she didn’t know that when the Speaker referred her open-meeting bill to three committees, it was supposed to die. She didn’t know that when bills are brought to a vote on a Thursday, as hers was, they are to be voted down. In her inexperience, she didn’t know that she should bow to the arrogance of entrenched incumbents, and as a result, Oklahoma now has an open-meeting law. Opponents of term limitation have described Proposition 140 as vindictive and “mean-spirited”--perhaps the nastiest term that dedicated statists can imagine to describe those who disagree publicly with them. Provisions that would limit service in the Legislature to 14 years are called Draconian. Notably, the term-limit law passed in Oklahoma restricts total service in the Legislature to 12 years. So perhaps Draconian is what the people want. In fact, it is the opponents of term limitation who hold a “mean-spirited” view of their fellow citizens in assuming that the 120 people who now sit in the Legislature are the best and only ones qualified to do so. If a Revolutionary America of 4 million souls could produce the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, surely a California of 30 million souls can produce more men and women of stature than those who now serve.

With the passage of an average 1,566 new laws a year, most of them incomprehensible to the average citizen, it is clear that California suffers from a surfeit of laws and professional lawmakers. The principle of regular turnover in office assumes, and rightly, that there are many thoughtful individuals who would ably serve the people briefly, from love, if given the opportunity to do so.