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Group running ad against defeated legislation Saturday, Mar 31, 2007 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - A political ad blasting a proposal to extend legislators' term limits has been airing on some Arkansas television stations, even though the legislation failed to get out of committee and is described by its sponsor as "essentially dead." The ad by U.S. Term Limits takes aim at House Joint Resolution 1021 by Rep. Will Bond, D-Jacksonville. The measure failed to clear the Joint Committee on Constitutional Amendments when it came before that committee on March 21. The ad opens with cartoon pigs smoking cigars. "Politicians bring to mind a certain image," an off-screen announcer says. "There's a reason." The announcer says Arkansans voted in 1992 to establish term limits, and in 2004 they voted against a proposal by the Legislature to expand term limits. "But now some legislators, led by Will Bond, again want to defy voters, just so they can dance with the lobbyists a little longer. Tell Rep. Bond and the others, just like you did before, to leave Arkansas' voter-passed term limits law alone," the announcer says. "The funniest part about it is, the ads are being run after the bill (died in committee)," Bond said Friday. "It made it to the joint committee but didn't get a recommendation, so the bill's essentially dead. And they've spent no telling how much money running those ads." HJR 1021 would refer to voters a proposed constitutional amendment extending legislators' term limits to 12 years in the House and 12 years in the Senate. House members currently are limited to three two-year terms and senators are limited to two four-year terms. The resolution also would ban legislators from accepting gifts or entertainment from lobbyists and from registering as lobbyists within one year of leaving the Legislature. State lawmakers voted this session to refer to voters two proposed constitutional amendments, one to remove outdated language from the state constitution and one to create annual legislative sessions. The proposals will be on the 2008 general election ballot. Moving any additional proposed amendments through the Legislature this close to the end of the session would require suspending the rules, "and we're just not going to do that," said Rep. Jeff Wood, D-Sherwood, House chairman of the Joint Committee on Constitutional Amendments. "I would say that we are out of the constitutional amendment business" for this session," Wood said. Jeremy P. Johnson, director of state government affairs for the Virginia-based advocacy group U.S. Term Limits, said the resolution was still alive when work began on the ad. "We were in production when it got to the Joint Committee on Constitutional Amendments, so we went ahead and ran with it," he said. Despite the failure of HJR 1021, the pro-term limits group wanted "to make sure that the constituents got in touch with their legislators and told them how they felt about it," Johnson said. The ad is scheduled to continue airing through Monday, he said. Bond said the ad is misleading because it makes no mention of the prohibitions against accepting gifts from lobbyists and going directly from the Legislature into lobbying. "The ad says that legislators want to do this, particularly Will Bond, so they can 'dance with the lobbyists' longer,' and the bill - if it were adopted by the people, by the way - would specifically prohibit that," Bond said. Asked why the ad mentions lobbyists but does not mention the restrictions the measure would place on lobbying, Johnson said he does not believe curbing lobbyists' power is the true intent of the proposal. "Any effort to disguise a term limits bill with an ethics reform package isn't going to work," he said. |
