If you hear the word "reform," reach for your gun.

Term limits are on the ballot in Santa Monica and, I suspect, in other places where voters are frustrated. To put it as positively as possible, term limits are intended to bring new ideas and put a brake on entrenched interests. But there is no evidence that either of these outcomes occur.

In 2004, the Public Policy Institute of California published a research paper about the state legislative term limits that California voters enacted in 1990. The analysis found that rather than representing a new breed of "citizen legislator," "new members after term limits behave a great deal like their precursors.”

Term limits are a terrible idea. Here are some reasons why:

1. Term limits are anti-democratic. A fundamental principle in our system of government is that citizens get to choose their representatives. Term limits curtail that fundamental right. Voters should be able to vote for whomever they want to represent them.

2. Like it or not, politics is a profession. We ask our representatives to find solutions to pressing problems, often problems with no simple answers. Political representation is a learned skill; as with any profession, experience matters. The public is not well served by inexperienced people making policy choices with widespread, lasting consequences. In effect, term limits deny voters expert representation. Government is complicated. Just when representatives begin to learn their job, they are termed out.

3. Representative government is dependent on compromise. Term limits severely hamper the opportunity for understanding and trust to develop between council members. Strangers in a new environment can't know whose judgement to accept and which colleagues know what they're doing. Also,decreasing the number of seasoned elected officials results in greater deference to bureaucrats, especially in cases like Santa Monica's where elected officials have no independent staff of their own.

4. Term limits discourage the development policy expertise: members who know their time on the city council (or any office) is limited will be disinclined to spending the time and effort necessary to acquire expertise on specific issues knowing that, in most cases, that difficult-to-acquire knowledge won’t be nearly as valuable or useful in the assembly or state senate or wherever they're forced to head next. Also, special interests are always ready to jump in to help elected officials bone up on an issue, which distorts policy in favor of those interests.

5. Term limits empower bureaucrats and the special interests. Institutional memory is in the hands of staff: it is difficult to know when you are being manipulated or misled if you don't know the history of the issue being considered. By the same token, if lobbyists don't like an outcome, they don't have to wait long before they can take another shot at new arrivals. The people's representatives will soon be gone; the bureaucrats and special interests will be around forever.

6. Inevitably, there will be the temptation to defer to individuals, groups, and lobbies with matters before the council that may be helpful in getting the next political job.

7. Special interests are empowered at election time: campaign spending becomes all important when new faces need to be sold at every election.

8. Knowing they are going to be termed out, incumbents spend their time running for their next job instead of doing the job they have now.

9. We already have term limits. They're called elections.

Term limit campaigns are often cynical attempts by politicians to exploit voters' frustrations by appearing to favor a "reform." They often reveal a deep distrust of the democratic process. If you're unhappy with the government you have, you have the power to change it. Get involved. Vote.

Vote no on Prop TL.