Desperate Legislators
By Jan Larson (02/13/06)
Politicians at all levels of government typically run for office ostensibly to “serve the people.” Once elected, however, it is not uncommon that many legislators find that “serving the people” is not such a bad gig after all. A good many of these faithful solons decide that they really don’t want to give up their roles as public factotums and instead will fight tooth and nail to retain those positions of servitude.
There is no better example of this legislative desperation than in my home state of Nebraska. In 1992, Nebraska voters passed a constitutional amendment that would limit legislators, statewide officials and U. S. Senators to two consecutive terms and U. S. Representatives to four consecutive terms.
That measure was challenged and ultimately thrown out in 1994 by the Nebraska Supreme Court on the basis that initiative champions did not gather the requisite number of signatures to place the issue on the ballot.
Undeterred, term-limit supporters managed to get another constitutional amendment initiative on the 1994 ballot. Once again, the measure passed by a large margin.
A 1995 U. S. Supreme Court ruling declared that individual states could not limit the terms of U. S. Representatives and Senators thus rendering that portion of the 1994 measure unconstitutional. As a result of that ruling, in 1996 the state Supreme Court ruled that the remaining portions of the measure were “so intertwined” with the unconstitutional part, that the entire measure was declared void.
A term limits initiative was once again presented to the voters in 2000 and for the third time Nebraskans approved limiting state legislators to two consecutive terms.
One might think that after asking the question three times and getting the same answer three times, the “servants of the people” would respect the wishes of those people. One might think, but one would be wrong.
Last year, as the first group of senators to be affected by the 2000 amendment was approaching the mandatory end of their “service,” the Nebraska unicameral considered asking voters to weaken or repeal the term limits. Public outcry quashed that idea before it got any farther.
Not easily thwarted in their quest to retain power, three esteemed Nebraska state senators, Marian Price (2 terms), Dennis Byars (3 terms) and Ernie Chambers (10 terms) have continued to fight term limits in the courts.
Their latest desperate assault on the wishes of the people of Nebraska claimed that the amendment was “poorly written.” Specifically their assertion was that since the amendment defined the service of more than one-half of a term as a full term for the purposes of term limits, legislators would be forced out of office midway through their second terms, and therefore the amendment should be invalidated.
Fortunately, sanity prevailed in the state judiciary last week when District Judge Karen Flowers ruled, as reported in the Omaha World-Herald [1], that upholding the senators’ “poor wording” claim would require her to ignore “most, if not all” of the rules governing constitutional law. She also wrote, “It is only by torturing the plain language of the amendment that it could mean anything else.”
The only remaining step for the three desperate lawmakers would be to appeal to the state Supreme Court, but such an appeal would take too long to save the jobs of the first group of 20 senators, including Byars and Price. (Chambers will be term-limited in 2008.)
If legislators truly are public servants, it should not be too much to ask that these servants respect the wishes of those they serve. Apparently oblivious to the clear wishes of the voters and lamenting as if the world were coming to an end, Price said, “There is no way to save the first class of 20.” Byars, commenting on a possible Supreme Court appeal said, “Hopefully it will be helpful to our colleagues two years from now.”
There are legislators in Washington and across the country that stand before the cameras with polished faces and perfect hair talking about their selfless public service, but like Byars, Chambers and Price, many are simply more interested serving themselves.
[1] http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=528&u_xid=947&u_sid=2112321
Copyright ©2006 Jan A. Larson All rights reserved.
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