“Breakthrough coalition working on expanding term limits,” hollers the Lansing City Post headline.
“Michigan’s legislative leaders,” the capital-based paper informs, “are working on a term limits expansion deal for state lawmakers .… The conceptual plan, which won’t be finalized until December, would be that lawmakers could serve a combined 20 years in both the House and Senate before they would be broomed from office.”
Yes, you heard that correctly: the legislative bosses want a new term limits law allowing politicians to serve 20 years in a single seat.
Twenty years is no term-limit. It’s a cushy retirement plan.
In unsurprising bipartisanship, Michigan’s NPR affiliate reports that, “Senate Democratic Leader Jim Ananich (D‑Flint) says lawmakers from his party could get on board.” The Democrat added, “[W]e’re not big supporters of term limits in the first place.”
The other big news is that the scheming is no longer confined to politicians and their cronies over at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce — the business lobby that for three decades has curried favor with lawmakers by conspiring to undo the state’s voter-enacted term limits. Now, also plotting behind closed doors with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield is the progressive, union-funded Voters Not Politicians group.
“He and the speaker have found a willing partner in VNP,” a spokesperson for Shirkey acknowledged.
Unlike the unpopular Chamber and politicians, Voters Not Politicians sports a shred of grassroots credibility, having led a successful 2018 ballot initiative on redistricting.
But that shred will last only until Michiganders find out that Voters Not Politicians has sadly morphed into Politicians Not Voters.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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