ALLTHINGS NEBRASKA
It’s been 26 years since Nebraskans voted to impose term limits on state senators.
But in November, voters have a chance to extend the state’s term limit – from two consecutive, four-year terms to three consecutive, four-year terms.
(Lawmakers can come back after being term limited and sitting out a four-year term. A handful have. The most famous case is Omaha State Sen. Ernie Chambers, who served 38 years in the Unicameral, was term limited in 2008, and then won election in 2012 and served eight more years.)
While term limits have allowed more people to serve, it’s also ended the service of some really smart legislators too soon. It has shifted power to the executive branch and to lobbyists, and also contributed to a harsher partisan divide in the one-house Unicameral.
The State Legislature deals with many complicated issues, like AI, data centers and even the death penalty.
The most complicated issue is taxation, especially concerning property taxes and how local, K-12 education is funded.
Do you raise state sales taxes so you can cut property taxes? How far can you cut state income taxes? (The state is discovering that the most recent cut probably went too far, and has contributed to huge deficits in state budgets.)
How exactly should local education be funded? More state aid? More local tax options?
Should lawmakers change the state aid formula? If you give more state aid, doesn’t that mean that there’s less local control, via local school boards, over whether you keep a local school?
Governors and several platoons of senators have grappled with the issue of property taxes for decades. And still we feel property taxes are way too high.
We’re often told that Nebraska’s formula for distributing state aid to local school districts is so complicated that “no one understands it.”
I’m not sure that’s completely true. A smart staffer in the depths of the State Department of Education understands it.
But to expect part-time, state senators to grasp how it works in a couple of years is probably a stretch. And then, once they understand it, to expect them to craft a solution, and sell it to their fellow state senators before they are term limited is probably a stretch, too.
I have little doubt that property taxes would be lower in the state if we allowed state senators to hang around for more than eight years. I keep thinking of former State Sen. Jerome Warner of Waverly, a truly wise legislator, who ruled over the state’s tax system for years. He knew which levers could be pulled, and which ones couldn’t.
It takes time to understand complicated problems, develop solutions, and then sell them to fellow senators. It also takes time to develop trust among fellow representatives, and develop leaders.
If you cannot serve more than two consecutive, four-year terms it creates an ever churning cast of legislators, who have to start the education process anew and hope, before their clock strikes two terms, they can get something done.
Term limits have also helped to make “moderate” state senators an endangered species because there’s an open seat, at least, every eight years.
Our state legislative districts have been drawn so that most, if not all, are either “safe” Republican or “safe” Democrat districts. That makes it harder for a moderate candidate to win a primary election because fewer people vote in the primary and the ones who do, tend to be more partisan, from the right and left fringes of their parties.
Norfolk State Sen. Rob Dover, who introduced the change in term limits to three terms, also argues that Nebraska, because it has a one-house Unicameral, loses more institutional knowledge than states with a Senate and House.
In two-house states, he said, a term-limited senator could run for the House, and continue to serve, albeit in a different legislative body.
Polls consistently show that voters approve of term limits. “Throw the bums” out is a line we often hear.
But if you want solutions to complicated problems, you might want a legislative body that can gain more experience, and more knowledge. – 30 –
Paul Hammel has covered the Nebraska state government and the state for decades. He is a retired senior reporter for the Nebraska Examiner and the former Capitol Bureau Chief for the Omaha World-Herald. A native of Ralston, Nebraska, he loves traveling and writing about the state.
