It’s just a little delay

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RALEIGH — Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone.

Some state legislators aren’t thrilled with the idea of limiting the terms of legislative leaders.

No, I’m not talking about the ones like former House Speaker and current House Minority Leader Joe Hackney, who show open disdain for the idea.

Some of the honorables who have voted for limits aren’t fans either.

Legislators came to Raleigh last month vowing that they would approve a proposed constitutional amendment to limit the terms of the House speaker and Senate president pro tem.

When they left town after a three-day, reconvened session, lo and behold, they hadn’t acted on the measure.

The official version of events is that the House and Senate can’t agree on just how long the House speaker and Senate leader should serve.

The House had passed a proposed amendment back in April that would limit the tenure of top legislative jobs to four years. (The change would affect only the terms in the leadership posts; anyone in those jobs could continue serving in the legislature as long as voters would have them.)

The Senate, during the reconvened session, responded with its own version, passing a proposed amendment that included a limit of four consecutive terms, or eight years. Senate leader Phil Berger said the sentiment in the Senate was to not make legislative leaders’ terms more restrictive than those of the governor.

This idea of limiting legislative leaders’ terms first gained momentum when former House Speaker Jim Black was indicted and then sent to prison after leading that chamber for eight years.

Black’s tenure as speaker showed that long years in the top legislative jobs concentrate power and can isolate the leadership.

The big money that began flowing into legislative campaigns during the 1990s only increased the power. Allowing unlimited donations to move through the political parties caused legislative leaders to become the primary conduit for all the campaign cash.

Former Senate leader Marc Basnight, who served in the Senate’s top spot for twice as long as Black, may have avoided the pitfalls of his fellow Democrat.

The pork that Basnight directed toward his beloved Outer Banks still created critics who complained about his lengthy tenure.

That recent history has Berger and current House Speaker Thom Tillis under pressure to do something. Both say they believe a proposed constitutional amendment on leadership terms will be on the ballot in November of next year, that a compromise will be reached.

Perhaps. But Berger further muddied the water when he suggested that one solution would be limiting the governor to a single, four-year term.

And wouldn’t it be interesting if, come May, legislators once again can’t quite decide whether four, six, or eight years is best? Or, maybe they can’t quite find the votes to try to return to the 1970s, when North Carolina limited its governor to a single term.

But they tried. They really did.

And there is always next year.

Mooneyham writes about North Carolina politics for the Capitol Press Association.