MISSOURI WATCH: IS THIS WHAT WE REALLY WANT?

Past experience suggests that fully half of Missouri's voters cannot name, much less characterize, their state legislators, and while this observation is less valid in outstate Missouri, it is virtually the rule rather than the exception in urban areas of the state. Unless one believes representative government is best managed by anonymous men and women, no one can welcome the imminent anonymity that will soon cloak the membership of both chambers in the Missouri General Assembly.

That date has already been set by law, and as the clock begins running toward the inevitable date of wholesale departures, first in the Missouri House of Representatives and later vacating the Missouri Senate, signs point to a crisis -in Jefferson City -that threatens to erode still further the public's confidence in government.

What is this threat that now hangs over the State Capitol and promises to create unanticipated chaos? Its popular name is term limits, a contorted creation that was designed to correct one ill but instead has set the stage for a dark period in Missouri's political history. Limiting how long any duly elected legislator could remain in office was viewed favorably by a majority of voters in our state, whose knee-jerk decision now threatens to create more problems that has ever been imagined.

Imagine, if you will, the -idiocy of a retail business or a corporate manufacturer employing workers under the rules of term limits. Instead of seeking experienced, conscientious and stable workers, personnel directors would explain to job applicants that even though they performed their duties in a competent manner, passed a re-examination period every two or four years and gained a degree of competence that would greatly enhance the profitability of the company, they could not expect to have their jobs beyond eight or twelve years.

And, furthermore, under the amendment so myopically approved by voters in Missouri, these workers could never in their lifetimes expect to hold a job in the company after their dismissal.

Just how many experienced, conscientious and stable job applicants would be interested in employment with companies or corporations that had adopted such rules? Not many, except those whose past employment tenures were brief or those who had few expectations of reaching any degree of job perfection.

Yet these are the employment restrictions Missourians have placed on the members of their General Assembly, and the clock is now ticking toward explosion date. Indeed, the date is so close that the incumbent President pro tem of the Missouri Senate, Bill McKenna, must step down from this highly important post on the same day he becomes ineligible to serve his constituents under the restrictions of term limits.

The career choice of Missouri legislator is vanishing, not because competent lawmakers have grown weary of a job that is both demanding and challenging but because they have too many years of knowledge and experience.

There are unrecognized dangers to the still-hidden effects of term limits that are even greater than the ones mentioned above. One of them is the all-important job budget and appropriation committees perform in studying, debating and refining state budgets, a job that requires both long hours and long memories. An institutional history is absolutely essential if agency budgets are to meet the test of efficiency and accountability, which is why these committee assignments are most often given to those who know how agencies operate and what previous budgets have recognized about program results and failures. An appropriations committee filled completely with first-term or second-term representatives or senators would be nothing short of a disaster.

Is this what Missourians want from their elected lawmakers: inexperience, no historical knowledge, no earthly idea of past results and failures?

Newly elected House or Senate members will have no choice but to elect newly elected leaders, who in turn will have no knowledge of where to tread and where not to tread in the all-important business of enacting legislation, approving multibillion-dollar budgets and meeting power challenges from the executive branch, from lobbyists whose experience will dwarf the knowledge of newcomers and from permanent legislative staff members who will most assuredly possess far greater power and influence than unknowing and unaware first-term elected representatives of the people.

Is this what Missourians want: a transfer of power from the officials they choose and install in office to those who have no accountability to the public?

-Term limits was approved by Missourians because the proponents used House Speaker Bob Griffin as a worst-case example and much of the discussion was about how a corrupt system could be corrected. No one seems to have noticed that Griffin, who still provided the state with numerous beneficial programs during his tenure, was gone before term limits even went into effect. Indeed, the system that was castigated by term limits enthusiasts disposed of Griffin, not their faux reform scheme.

As term limits begin taking effect in our state, Missourians may realize that shutting out experienced legislators has unintended consequences. In coming years we can expect more legislators to vanish from the scene and their knowledge and experience to vanish with them. We can also expect that fewer voters will know who represents them in the state Capitol . For new lawmakers, the challenge will be to keep the ship afloat while they learn their duties and how to perform them in the best manner possible.

Is this what Missourians really want?

Jack Stapleton of Kennett is editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.