Small
Business Not on Board with Term Limits Tinkering
Elections are over and efforts to change the
state’s term limits law in the “lame duck” legislative session will be
met with opposition from NFIB. Some in the Lansing “beltway” have
convinced themselves that there is a public outcry to change the term limits
law to lengthen a lawmaker’s term of office, however, it is doubtful that there is support for such a change from
the average citizen outside the vicinity of the state Capitol and there is no support from the small business members of NFIB.
A recent Google Survey indicated a strong negative reaction to changing
the state’s term limits law among the general public surveyed. The Google poll
showed 53.5 percent of respondents said “No” to changing the law with only 10.1
percent supporting a change and the rest, 36.4%, undecided or don’t know. This would indicate the lack of a ground swell of public support for tinkering with term
limits.
NFIB has surveyed its members numerous times over the years on the issue
of changing the term limits law and each time they have shown support for
leaving the law as is. The only time our members indicated support for a
change was to repeal the term limits law entirely in exchange for a part-time
legislature.
In 1992
Michigan voters passed a ballot proposal that amended Michigan’s constitution
to impose term limits on state legislative offices. As a result, Michigan House members were
limited to serving no more than three two-year terms (six years total) and
Michigan Senate members were limited to no more than two four-year terms (eight
years total).
If a specific proposal emerges, we may conduct a more updated
survey of our small business members, however, the message from our small business
owners has been: “don’t mess with the term limits law”.
Note: Google Survey responses were limited to Michigan residents only
