I believe Greensboro’s City Council and Guilford County’s Board of Commissioners should be subject to Term Limits.

Absent term limits, legislators getting older, less productive, more entrenched; young Wisconsinites inadequately represented

 

WPRI study, “The Case for Term Limits for the Wisconsin Legislature,” finds turnover rates among lowest in nation, analyzes causes and pitfalls of long, comfortable careers

 

Gov. Jim Doyle recently threw his support behind term limits, arguing that they keep “the political world from becoming stagnant” and allow us “to draw new insights and inspiration from the wellsprings of renewal in each generation.”

 

A new Wisconsin Policy Research Institute study reveals just how stagnant Wisconsin’s current political world is, and how public policy has suffered.

 

… since 1977 the average age of Wisconsin’s state senators and representatives has increased 12 and 13 years respectively. The Assembly has the fifth lowest turnover rate in the country while the Senate has the seventh lowest. Incumbent legislators have lost only 5% of general elections since 1963.

 

"We’ve seen that for more and more legislators, serving in the statehouse has become more of a career than a public service," said WPRI Senior Fellow Christian Schneider. "… given our recent history of fiscal mismanagement, that might actually be a boost for our state’s finances."  

 

The study documents how legislators with more than 12 years of service typically draft far fewer bills than their less experienced colleagues, and often avoid sound fiscal planning.

 

Modern Wisconsin legislators…enjoy advantages of incumbency – including taxpayer-funded mailings and support staff – that help stymie competition…

 

http://wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=173589

10/15/2009