TERM LIMITS MAY BE REVISITED

By a margin of more than 70 percent, Missouri voters passed term limits on our state lawmakers in November 1992. (On the same date, Missourians endorsed term limits for our federal congressmen and senators to take effect at such time as half the 50 states have done the same.) Beginning with state legislators elected after that date, the most any person can serve is eight years in the House and eight in the Senate. Now term limits are back in the news, owing to the efforts of certain veteran lawmakers, who have always hated the idea, to repeal or modify them.

State Sen. John Schneider, D-Florissant and the dean of the Senate, has proposed constitutional amendments to give voters two options to consider on the 2000 election ballot. One would extend term limits to 12 years per chamber, while the other would repeal term limits altogether and limit lawmakers to four years in a leadership post. A similar resolution to extend term limits from eight years to 12 is pending in the House.

The proposal to limit the terms of those in the House or Senate leadership has real merit. Had it been in effect before, it might well be that voters, having been spared the abuses of seeing speaker after speaker of the House go to the penitentiary, might never have insisted on limiting all lawmakers' terms. Having done just that by overwhelming margins, however, repeal is most unlikely. It wouldn't hurt, however, to let the people revisit this issue at the ballot box.