When it comes to term limits for politician’s everyone has an opinion.  If you are a person who does not believe in or like term limits I found an interesting article in the Michigan Capitol Confidential pointing out what many have blamed on term limits.

Politicians, Pundits & Reporters Have blamed term limits for bad roads, large refundable tax credits to State per-capita income declines. 

In 2015, Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley blamed State Senator Virgil Smith of Detroit for his arrest for shooting at his ex-wife’s car after she caught him in bed with another woman.  Mr. Finley also blamed the State Representative Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat fiasco on term limits.  To be fair to Nolan he stated the reason he attributed these problems were due to:

Term limits have turned the Legislature into an amateur vaudeville club. Members are coming into the state’s lawmaking bodies younger, less experienced and with fewer qualities to recommend them than at anytime in the state’s history.

Many haven’t a clue of what they can and can not do, where the boundaries of their authority lie, or how to bargain toward a solution. And they aren’t around long enough to learn.

Political commentator Tim Skubick has even linked increased tuition rates at state universities to term limits back in 2012.

James Hohman a fiscal analyst from his Mackinac Center for Public Policy and frequent guest on the Live with Renk show, back in 2016 decided to start a collection of all the things that were blamed on term limits.

He was quoted in the article stating:

When state political commentators didn’t like something that happened in Lansing, term limits were regular pointed at as the villain...I had noticed that for years. So I started a list and began adding to it whenever I saw term limits blamed for something.

James found some of the following issues being blamed on term limits: 

The Flint lead crisis, the ballot-box failure of a 2015 gas tax increase, the Detroit school district’s ongoing woes, termed-out politicians’ relatives running for office, nepotism, racism, poor roads, failure of lawmakers to enact auto insurance reform, a decline in the quality of life, poor teacher evaluations and (alleged) declines in state personal income.

In total James Hohman the a total 54 issues since March 2016 blamed on term limits and I can only assume that list will keep on growing.  Check out his list below:

Courtesy of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Courtesy of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy
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I understand the arguments of never term limiters but come on, they appear to be getting out of hand.

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