Should SC lawmakers face term limits? GOP candidates for governor are all for it

For the first time since at least 2000, and possibly ever, a proposal to cap how long S.C. legislators can stay in office passed a legislative panel Wednesday.

The term-limits bill won't become law this year. But a long-awaited hearing on the proposal Wednesday offered Republican candidates for governor the chance to throw their support behind the idea as a means of cleaning up corruption at the State House, controlled by the GOP.

Opponents argued the proposal is just election-season posturing. If passed, it would leave inexperienced lawmakers in charge of running state government and its $8 billion general fund budget, they add.

"It's like putting inexperienced folks in charge of a very large corporation," said former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Larry Martin, R-Pickens. "From a business perspective, that doesn't make sense."

However, three GOP candidates for governor — Lt. Gov. Kevin Bryant of Anderson, Mount Pleasant labor attorney Catherine Templeton and Greenville businessman John Warren — testified Wednesday they would support term limits if elected in November. Republican Gov. Henry McMaster also supports term limits, his spokesman said in a statement.

The Republicans complained the General Assembly's current seniority-based power structure places too much influence in the hands of a few lawmakers — including fellow Republican Hugh Leatherman of Florence, who is the head of the Senate and its powerful Finance Committee. Meanwhile, other legislators must wait years to make an impact.

"If you’re up here all the time, you only know what’s going on in the State House," said Templeton, the former director of the state's labor and environmental agencies. "We need real people, normal people,” in the Legislature.

Twenty-one states have adopted term limits for legislators, though six have repealed the laws or seen them overturned in court.

Despite the higher turnover among legislators, an academic study found no noticeable drop in efficiency or effectiveness in the remaining 15 state legislatures with term limits, according to Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Studies have found the governor in those states tends to take on more power, Storey said. That would be a significant shift in South Carolina, where one of the country's strongest legislatures overshadows a relatively weak executive branch.

States that adopt term limits also have more robust orientation programs for new legislators, who have less time to get up to speed before they are term-limited out of office, Storey said.

“It takes a little while to find the bathrooms down here, at least two years," said state Sen. Rex Rice, R-Pickens.

Gov. McMaster supports term limits because they "would give the people of South Carolina more power and control over their government," spokesman Brian Symmes said in a statement.

Warren, one of McMaster's challengers, said forced turnover in the General Assembly would attract candidates who don't want to wait decades for a chance to push their ideas.

“You will get new ideas, innovative ideas, very high-caliber people who are willing to serve for six years or eight years who don’t want to come down here and serve for 20 years to get nothing done, and then for the next 10 years might get something done," he said.

Lt. Gov. Bryant rejected the counterargument that S.C. voters can enact their own term limits — by voting out incumbents at the polling booth.

“The incumbent has such a strong advantage at running for re-election," Bryant said. "It’s very rare that an incumbent has not returned to Columbia."

The term-limits bill is dead for the year. It has neither the time nor the support needed to pass the Senate and House with only four days left in the legislative session. It also would need the approval of S.C. voters in a statewide referendum.

However, the proposal was passed unanimously by a Senate subcommittee Wednesday, composed entirely of freshman senators.

State Sen. Williams Timmons, the first-term Greenville Republican who authored the bill, said it will be refiled before lawmakers return to Columbia next year.

Term-limit proposals have been filed for years in the House and Senate, with none getting serious debate. Asked how he managed to get a hearing on his bill, Timmons replied: "I asked a hundred times."

This story was originally published May 2, 2018 at 12:14 PM with the headline "Should SC lawmakers face term limits? GOP candidates for governor are all for it."