Term limits are hurting democracy

by J Scott Christianson, Columbia Daily Tribune Columnist

Missouri’s experiment with term limits is a perfect lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Instead of breaking the grip on power held by incumbent lawmakers and returning that power to the people, term limits have handed the power in Jefferson City to the capital’s lobbyists.

With term limits, the average tenure in the General Assembly has dwindled to three to four years, not nearly long enough to maintain the amount of institutional memory needed to deal with the complex issues…