Missouri Senate pushes term limits for all statewide officers
Austin Huguelet
JEFFERSON CITY — Since 1992, nearly everyone with a vote or veto in the state capitol has had their days numbered by term limits — with a few notable exceptions.
Missouri senators moved to change that this week, voting 31-3 to approve a resolution applying the two-term, eight-year caps on the governor and treasurer to the state’s auditor, attorney general, lieutenant governor and secretary of state.
Sponsoring Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, R-Parkville, told colleagues before the vote his goal was to eliminate an “inconsistency” among the state’s top elected officials.
Not everyone was on board.
Some lawmakers do not want term limits
Sen. Ed Emery, R-Lamar, told Luetkemeyer he thinks it’s actually beneficial to allow attorneys general and auditors to build up expertise in office; Emery said he'd rather see term limits removed for treasurers.
“We want people in there who are experienced and know the job and know what they’re doing,” he said. “I do think that those are a little different categorically and functionally than those top executive positions.”
It wouldn’t be unheard of: More than a dozen states, including neighboring Kansas, confine term limits to the governor and his deputy executive among statewide officers, according to a 2016 Council of State Governments report. Fourteen states have no term limits for their statewide officials.
Sen. Gary Romine, R-Farmington, also brought up the oft-lamented issues lawmakers have had with term limits, which some say have left them at the mercy of long-tenured lobbyists on complex issues.
But Luetkemeyer pointed out statewide officials have the benefit of large career staffs that carry on institutional knowledge in their stead.
The resolution now moves to the House for further consideration.
Similar resolutions have been posed in the past and were priorities of former Gov. Eric Greitens, but never won full approval.
If that changes this session, Missourians would vote in 2020 on whether to make the changes to the state constitution. If history is any indication, it would have a good shot at approval.
An amendment restricting state legislators from spending more than 8 years in the House or Senate passed with 75 percent of the vote in 1992.