August 16, 2006

NCSL's Report Belies Its Press Release

NASHVILLE - Despite yesterday's media hype, a new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures that is critical of term limits actually contains very little about the effect of term limits on increasing the numbers of female and minority members in state legislatures - and despite what the NCSL claimed in its press release yesterday, that term limits have failed to increase racial and gender diversity in state legislatures, there is evidence within the NCSL's own report that term limits are beginning to have the opposite effect.

Thanks to a Tennessee expatriate and BillHobbs.com reader who has the right media connections I now have a copy of the NCSL's report, Coping With Term Limits, A Practical Guide, released yesterday during the NCSL's annual conference, being held in Nashville this year.

As I wrote about in the previous post, the NCSL trumpeted the study's finding that term limits have not resulted in more female and minority legislators being elected. I questioned the NCSL's claim yesterday that increasing specifically minority and female representation was the primary reason or even a major reason that term limits proponents gave while pushing for term limits.

Now, there is also reason to question the veracity of the NCSL's own press release, which hyped the "diversity" question - generating big mainstream media coverage - even though the report doesn't really sustain the picture painted in that release.

Here is the only passage in the 36-page NCSL report that even mentions the issue of female and minority legislators:

The most publicly visible facet of the legislature is its members. One of the more popular promises of term limits proponents was that they would change the composition of legislatures to make them more representative of the populations they served - weeding out ineffective members and bringing in fresh faces, including more women and minorities.

Term limits have not led to the new breed of diverse, citizen legislators proponents expected to see, however. In general, there are not more women or minorities in state legislatures, and there is no substantial difference in legislators' age and occupational backgrounds. Between 1995 and 2004, the only term-limited legislatures that showed an increase in the number of women were California and South Dakota. In a majority of term-limited states, the number of women legislators has actually decreased since term limits took effect.

Isolated examples can be found of gains in the number of minorities elected to several termlimited legislatures, including an increase in the number of Latinos in the California and Florida legislatures, and, to a lesser extent, in Arizona. An increase in the number of African Americans occurred in Michigan and, to a lesser extent, in Arkansas. JPTL researchers concluded that term limits accelerated demographic trends that already were at work in the state population, leading to these increases. In California, for example, as incumbents (often Anglos) were unable to run for reelection, the increasing number of Latinos in the state could be reflected in the Legislature, thanks to open seat elections. Overall, however, no systematic differences exist in the number of racial and ethnic minorities in term-limited legislatures versus non-term limited legislatures.

According to the NCSL, six of the 15 states that have term limits have increased numbers of female or minority legislators since term limits went into effect - that's more than a third. And, as the NCSL admits, term limits creates more open seats, allowing "demographic trends" such as a California's rising Latino population, to be reflected in the election of more Latino legislators.

But that's not the picture the NCSL and its partners in the study wanted to paint, because they want to make term limits go away.

As the NCSL report says in its final paragraph:

Changing or repealing term limits is clearly an attractive idea to legislatures that have begun to feel the negative effects of term limits, as demonstrated by the volume of legislation on this subject during the past six years. It is not an easy task, however. Legislatures that attempt it should take the time to educate their state’s citizens about the problems that term limits bring and heed the examples from other states of both successful and unsuccessful campaigns to change or repeal term limits.

The NCSL report is copyrighted so I don't have the right to upload the entire 36-page PDF file, but I will continue to post excerpts and comment on it throughout the day.

Next up later today: A look at how term limits impacts the influence of lobbyists.

The NCSL has requested I not offer to email the report to other bloggers. Instead, bloggers can get a copy of the copyrighted report by sending an email with a link to their blog in a request to press-room@ncsl.org.