How Prop 140’s staffing starvation crippled California’s Legislature

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OPINION — In the fall of 1990, California voters narrowly passed Proposition 140, which promised to get rid of career politicians by establishing strict term limits. Thirty-six years later, that experiment produced a self-defeating reality. 

Prop 140 did not just eliminate career politicians — it obliterated the Legislature’s institutional memory, created a brain-drain of professional staff, created a power shift to outside special interests, and increased power to the governor and executive branch agencies.

Hidden from voters was the enduring damage caused by Prop 140’s brutal, immediate 38% reduction in the Legislature’s internal operating budget. The expenditure cap is now adjusted annually based on California’s population and economic growth. This fiscal chokehold, designed to punish lawmakers, created unforeseen consequences, making the state’s professional policy staff and the public its long-term victims of a crippled system.

Before Prop 140, California had the most professional, expert legislative staff in the nation. Legislative committees were staffed with policy consultants, data analysts and legal experts who spent decades mastering numerous, highly complex fields. Solid experience allowed staffers to generate objective, non-partisan information that not only generated sound policy, but countered aggressive executive-branch agencies and highly paid corporate lobbyists. In other words, we had a balance of power necessary for effective public policy.

Today, that powerful intellectual firewall is gone. By stripping away time, money and staff, the law fundamentally shifted the balance of power in Sacramento. The resulting loss of expertise has created a perpetual revolving door. Newly elected officials still must draft complicated laws but now lack the knowledge to do so. Corporate lobbyists and special interest groups quickly stepped in to fill the void, drafting the bills themselves. That means their clients’ interests become priorities rather than the public’s, which severely compromises public policy.

Experienced policy directors and committee consultants face being underpaid and overworked in a Capitol that undervalues them. This creates a severe brain drain, leaving the Legislature with inexperienced, young staffers, who despite their best intentions, lack the historical background to catch flaws in complex bills. Essentially, we get what we pay for — ineffective and weak public policy. 

In 2012, voters recognized the system was broken and saw Proposition 28 as a fix. It reformed the term-limit structure by reducing the total number of years a lawmaker can serve in the Legislature from 14 to 12 years, but allowed them to serve all 12 years in a single chamber — either the Assembly or the Senate. While Prop 28 improved the continuity of elected officials, it ignored the root cause of the Legislature’s intellectual decay: Prop 140’s outdated staffing and operating budget caps.

The result? Lawmakers with 12 years of potential experience are still handicapped with committees staffed by revolving-door consultants with minimal tenure. A legislator cannot exercise true oversight if the staff advising them has inadequate job experience. Policy work is far too complicated for that and believing otherwise is incredibly foolish. 

The lack of institutional memory created a bruising power shift. Without independent researchers, the Legislature relies heavily on the Governor’s Office and executive branch agencies for data, and this weakens legislative oversight capabilities and its status as a co-equal branch of government. Wrecking the balance of power has created a government that doesn’t serve the public.

Many former and current California legislative staffers have expressed deep outrage and frustration over the operational culture and working conditions within the Legislature. This includes a toxic work environment and bullying with broken harassment reporting mechanisms, low pay and grueling hours, a lack of job security, and worse, no clear work structure. It was why legislative staffers wanted to unionize.

We didn’t just shoot ourselves in the foot with Prop 140, we amputated the very brain of the Legislature. To fix these terrible, unintended consequences, we have to reverse the blunder that weakened the Legislature’s ability to create effective public policy. We must restore institutional expertise, rebuild independent policy analysis and rebalance power away from unelected special interests that simply do not serve the public as they should.

We depend on the Legislature for improving society and without  institutional memory — lost to us because of Prop 140 — effective public policy suffers. It’s time to reverse the mess Prop 140 created because the quality of our very lives depends on it. The Legislature can’t ignore Prop 140’s failures if it truly wants California to be a golden state.

Dev Berger worked in the California state legislature, state government and as a private consultant. She is RPEA’s managing editor/PR Director.