Term Limits Add Up to Brain Drain

But in June, Gladstein appeared before the committee in a different role: representing the California Retailers Assn., a client of her new employer, a Sacramento lobbying firm.

"I've missed all of you," she playfully told the 10 legislators she had worked for.

Gladstein is part of an exodus of experienced legislative staff to California's lobbying corps, known in Sacramento as the Third House. The staff migration -- a repercussion of term limits passed in 1990 -- has strengthened the influence of interest groups in crafting laws but weakened lawmakers' ability to obtain the objective advice and institutional knowledge that once made California's Capitol a model for other states, according to many lawmakers, lobbyists and Sacramento veterans from both parties.

"What we have seen is the empowerment of the Third House at the expense of the Senate and Assembly," said Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles). "I'm one of the old-timers, but I find myself going to some of the folks who have already left the building to say, 'Hey, can you give me a history lesson?' "

Though all lawmakers hire office staff who often come and go with their bosses, California's Legislature has long been distinguished by policy experts who devoted years and even decades to transportation, agriculture, education or another specific subject.

Paid salaries sometimes topping $100,000, they work as chief consultants in committees or as senior advisors to legislative leadership. In deciding how to vote, legislators routinely rely on the in-depth analyses consultants write for every bill.

But those jobs feel less secure and professionally satisfying, many staffers say, because of the regular changes in committee leadership due to term limits, which cap tenure at six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate.

"I had the opportunity to work for two very good chairs, but there was a constant uncertainty about who would be the next chair," Gladstein, who earned $105,000 a year in the Assembly, said in an interview. "My current organization is much more stable."