Houston City Term Limits under fire.

Carol Alvarado and Ada Edwards had their last City Council meeting yesterday, and they both gave goodbye speeches, and then blistered the term limits system that forced them to resign...

(from Carolyn Feibel of the Chron)

The Houston City Council's 14-year experience with term limits came under attack Wednesday, as departing council members criticized the law as bad public policy and a disservice to residents.

Council members and the mayor can serve three two-year terms, for a total of six years. County commissioners, state senators and representatives, and school board members are not subject to limits.

"I think communities get shortchanged," said Councilwoman Carol Alvarado, who bid farewell to her colleagues Wednesday after six years representing District I on the city's east side.

"We lose talented people," said Alvarado, who plans to file today to run for state representative in District 145, the seat vacated by Democrat Rick Noriega in his bid for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator.

Term-limited District D Councilwoman Ada Edwards said she would run again, if she could.

Mayor Bill White has hired Edwards to work as his deputy chief of staff for neighborhood issues. She'll begin in January, earning $80,000 annually. Council members are paid $52,855 a year.

None of the arguments that Alvarado or Edwards are making here really have much resonance with me. They also don't stand up to deeper scrutiny. Houston isn't "losing" anyone with term limits. Alvarado is most probably going to win the HD 145 seat and Ada Edwards will be settling into a neighborhood relations job for which she is uniquely qualified, and she's getting a raise. Crying a river is harder to swallow when the tears are crocodile tears.

Term limits work except in a system where there's very low public participation. If you have very little public buy-in then you have a situation where the talent pool dries up. In Houston there are plenty of talented people who would do a fine job running the City if they were so inclined, but they're not. This creates a political reality where name recognition and the number of times running makes a difference. You don't really have to have the tools to govern well, you just have to be well known.

John Taylor, one of the professors makes another salient point:

Six years is not enough time for a council member to learn the ropes and begin to make serious reforms, said Jon R. Taylor, a political science professor at the University of St. Thomas.

"We see members make some serious policy gaffes," Taylor said. "We already have a mechanism to limit a mayor or council member's term — it's called an election."

Ah elections, that Holy Grail of democratic action, where the public can rise up out of squalor as a wronged mistriss and kick the wealthy baron out in the rain. It's like a Dickinson novel with 8% turnout. Therein lies the problem: public apathy. It's not that the voters are dumb, its not that the voters don't know who to vote for, its that they don't care. Often because the choices they are presented with are less than stellar. Often because life, and all of its messiness, gets in the way.

The main argument for term limits is that they prevent political fifedoms and keep the wheels of democracy freshly oiled. This ignores the fact that fifedoms still exist except that the puppeteer is typically now behind the scenes. The Kingmakers are tucked safely out of the public eye. They just plug in a new puppet to stop, smile at the camera, and regurgitate old information with newer, fresher, voice inflections. You can also argue that a constant flood of new ideas results in governing by "hot item" projects at the expense of the basics.

Hmmm..SafeClear, Muni WiFi, Discovery Green, mandated alarms at convenience stores at an owners expense, fining copper companies for copper theives crimes, mini-bike bans, "Si se puede", "the homeless have a right to exist", "Not in downtown they don't", $60,000 for foil grease bags, Houston Ambassadors in Bermuda shorts riding Segways, and four cylinder engines for all new Taxis....

What Houston needs is some good ol' fashioned brick and morter politicking. Road repair, police on the streets, firemen fighting fires, flood control, all of the things that are more likely to fly under the radar of a City Council member who only has six years to "prove themselves" so that they can get that cushy job working for a company who receives many local contracts or move on to higher public office with a host of "pet projects" to roll out in campaign ads.

The Government we deserve indeed.