Term Limits

Riding in a taxi in the coastal Colombian city of Cartagena some months ago, I was chatting with a Colombian colleague about whether the country's president, Alvaro Uribe, should be allowed to run for an unprecedented third term. Abruptly, our taxi driver turned and interjected: "You don't know what it was like here before Uribe. Taxi drivers like me were attacked and assaulted all the time. Now we have security."

A three-judge panel issued a ruling Thursday upholding Proposition R, the ballot measure that allows members of the Los Angeles City Council the opportunity to run for a third four-year term. The 2nd District Court of Appeal found that Proposition R, which was passed by voters in 2006, did not violate the law by having two different subjects in the same ballot measure. Proposition R loosened term limits for the 15-member council but also placed new restrictions on lobbyists, such as prohibiting them from serving on city commissions.

The Honduran president said Thursday that he would ignore a high court ruling ordering him to reinstate the military chief he had fired, escalating a showdown that has threatened the leftist leader's hold on power. President Manuel Zelaya's plan to hold a referendum Sunday on changing the constitution has pitted him against the country's top courts, the attorney general, military leaders and even his own party, all of whom say the vote is illegal.

The race to succeed Yvonne Burke on the county Board of Supervisors already promises to be one of the more significant Southern California political contests of 2008. That is partly a function of scarcity -- it's extraordinarily rare for seats on the board to come up for grabs -- but it's also one of power and the changing rules of local politics.

At first it seemed voters in Santa Ana would be asked to consider setting term limits for the mayor. After all, the current mayor has been in office for 16 years. But after much discussion, council members went in the opposite direction. Instead of setting term limits for the mayor's office, voters in Orange County's largest city next month will be asked to increase the number of terms council members can serve.

Softening his past opposition to changes to California's term-limits law, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is endorsing a Feb. 5 ballot measure that would allow many sitting lawmakers to run for office again this year rather than be forced to leave the Legislature.

I have long advocated reform in Sacramento, and I am proud of what has been accomplished since I took office in 2003. Now we need to take other important steps to make state government even more responsive to the people we serve. We need redistricting reform to make the political system more competitive and more representative of the citizens of California. We need campaign finance reform to limit the influence of money in politics, and it is time to reform legislative term limits.

The late Everett McKinley Dirksen, the melodic Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, reportedly intoned: "I live by my principles. And one of my principles is flexibility." Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had a "Dirksen moment" Tuesday. The governor flip-flopped on term limits -- a risky, gutsy move prompted by political pragmatism. Simply put, Schwarzenegger endorsed Proposition 93, the legislators' ballot initiative to change their term limits, because he wants to keep the current leaders around.

Like many political reform initiatives, Proposition 93 presents voters with a quandary. It would improve California's political system by rationally reforming the legislative term-limits law. But it also would confer a temporary, unearned and undeserved benefit on a handful of elected officials who broke faith with Californians.

Half of likely California voters support Proposition 93, the ballot measure to adjust the Legislature's term limits, but nearly as many appear poised to reject it, according to a new poll. A week before election day, with most respondents saying they have made up their minds, the initiative shows no strong lead, according to a Times/CNN/Politico poll conducted by Opinion Research Corp.