Ohio’s House and Senate leaders both express interest in changing term limits. Others skeptical

Last year, Ohio Republicans focused their political efforts on getting a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would make future amendments harder to pass. It was bumpy road to a sharp cliff. Despite that defeat, Ohio’s House and Senate leaders appear interested in putting an amendment before voters again.

“Term limits have essentially reduced the ability of the legislature to be effective, and those are the people who are most closely aligned with voters and citizens,” Senate President Matt Huffman told reporters recently.

He was echoing a point made at the end of last year by House Speaker Jason Stephens. The Speaker has one two-year term left in the House before he’s term-limited. Huffman, who’s already term-limited in the Senate, is running for a House seat this November.

Huffman referenced the idea of a 16-year term limit applying to service in both chambers of the General Assembly instead of the 8-years at a time restriction currently in the state constitution, but he didn’t commit to a specific set of changes.

“I think the Speaker and I are aligned on the concept, the specifics of that, you know, we can probably get worked out,” he said.

Although academics have questioned the wisdom of term limits since a wave of states began passing them in the early 1990s, there has been no public outcry to roll back Ohio’s restrictions. If anything, term limits are broadly popular.

Nevertheless, the idea’s lawmaker backers might stand to benefit from any changes. Former Speaker Larry Householder was working on a similar 16-year term limit idea before he was arrested on corruption charges. Under Householder’s plan, sitting lawmakers would get a clean slate — which might have opened the door to an 18-year term as House Speaker for Householder.

“A pox on all your houses”

Part of the reason so many voters support term limits is their general distaste for lawmakers.

“Term limits is a proxy for ‘a pox on all your houses.’ It’s a proxy for voter disenchantment with politics and the political process itself,” former Columbus Dispatch editor and state lawmaker Mike Curtin explained.

Curtin referenced Gallup polling from last summer showing Congress ranks dead last when it comes to Americans’ confidence in institutions. He compared trying to extend term limits in the current atmosphere to “riding into 100 mile an hour head winds” and argued any immediate effort would get “obliterated.”

Still, Curtin said, that doesn’t mean maintaining the current standard is a good idea.

“I’ve always felt this,” Curtin said, “I feel that eight years is too tough, too draconian, too stern a limit because you’re limiting the expertise of the legislature.”

Curtin noted lawmakers are responsible for appropriating more than $100 billion every other year, and the current limits don’t give them adequate time to really learn the ropes. That’s right in line with the arguments Speaker Stephens and Senate President Huffman have raised.

Catherine Turcer, who heads up Common Cause Ohio, has heard that argument before, and she’s skeptical.

“Because of the ability to go back and forth between the two chambers, we both have term limits, but legislators who are committed to remaining in the Ohio General Assembly can in fact, continue to seek election — it’s just a little more complicated.”

She also noted both men are angling to be Ohio House Speaker in January 2025, and it’s hard to separate their personal ambitions from their policy proposals. Turcer said it might make sense to change how term limits work, but without redistricting reform it could easily turn into an “incumbency protection plan.”

“I think once we thoroughly address gerrymandering,” she said, “well then we can start looking at other systemic kinds of changes. But we should always be a little leery of proposals for making it easier to stay in office.”

Rhine McLin was the first African American woman elected to the Ohio Senate in 1994, and she published a study on the effect of term limits in the University of Toledo Law Review. McLin explained she never thought term limits were a good idea. In 1989 she was appointed to complete her father’s term in the Ohio House, and described relying on the expertise of more experienced lawmakers.

“You know you come up with an idea, you think you’re coming up with some epiphany,” she said, “And they’ll say, well back in such and such and so we tried this, and we tried that, this is not how you go about doing this — you know, those kinds of things help!”

She also argued that with a ticking clock, lawmakers have less reason to build camaraderie across the aisle or between chambers. If you’re a senator, she explained, that representative from your backyard might be your opponent in a few years, “so we can’t afford to get too buddy, buddy.”

Pointing to Michigan as a model, McLin said she could support a 12-year lifetime limit. But like Turcer, she invoked redistricting reform as a necessary element if Ohio wants to actually scrap its term limits.

“If they were talking about 12 years and then banned, I could vote for it,” McLin explained. “If we’re talking about removing term limits, period, I would have to see that we were going to pass something about gerrymandering and develop fair districts before I would want to give that blanket opening there.”

At the end of the day, Curtin argued “there’s never a bad time” to consider an issue like term limits.

“I don’t care who raises it,” he said, “there’s always self-interest — you’re never going to eliminate self-interest.”

His biggest concern is how the idea gets presented to voters. Curtin worries if lawmakers push the issue forward without getting voters’ buy-in first, it could backfire spectacularly.

“You just don’t lose this time, you lose opportunity down the road,” he argued.

“If this is worth reconsideration — and I think it is,” Curtin said, “to rush it and get defeated by a big margin — which I think would happen — now you take it off the table for the next ten or twenty years.”

Follow OCJ Reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.