Title: Term limits
Published: Sacramento Bee
Date: May 22, 2012
About this cartoon: California voters keep imposing term limits on its legislators, with the idea that making them into "citizen legislators" will somehow make them less corrupt as "entrenched" professional lawmakers. It's a romanticized notion that doesn't play out in reality. Instead, legislators have been continually running for the next office, since they're about to lose their current ones, nobody has much experience or institutional memory, and lobbyists (who are not subject to term limits) have grown in influence as the only ones having long-term experience. California has turned its capitol into a place of revolving doors... and rookies.