Aloha State Daily received a press release today from a Mainland-based national interest group, U.S. Term Limits (USTL), letting us know that “2026 Hawai‘i state senate candidate, Wallyn Christian (District 13) has committed support for term limits on Congress by signing the term limits convention pledge.”
Why does this matter to that organization? “(USTL, the leader in the national, non-partisan movement to limit terms for elected officials, is gathering support from state lawmakers across the nation,” the statement says. “Its mission is to get 34 states to apply for an amendment proposal convention specific to term limits on Congress.”
Term-limiting Congress is a popular idea, and USTL cites a Pew Research poll that, “An overwhelming majority of adults (87%) favor limiting the number of terms that members of Congress are allowed to serve. This includes a majority 56% who strongly favor this proposal, just 12% are opposed.”
The idea emerges often for local politicians, as well. Civil Beat has found public support for term limits to be as high as 70% in a 2018 poll of likely voters, a stat Honolulu Civil Beat resurfaced in this 2023 survey of the lawmakers themselves to see where they stand on the idea of limiting their own time in office. “Nearly half of House members and more than a third of senators say they support term limits. There are enough undecideds in both chambers to give it a good shot if they held their position for two years,” CB found.
Respectfully, all of these people are wrong. Well intentioned, but they're aiming term limits at the wrong people.
I mean, I totally understand where the frustration is coming from. We elect people, nationally and locally, then are disappointed in their results. We could end their terms ourselves by simply not reelecting these people and yet obviously a lot of the people who say they want term limits do something very odd: They seem to reelect the lousy politicians they say they want to term limit.
You want to limit someone’s term? You’re just a month away from your next opportunity to vote for someone else!
So we’ve always had the power to fire politicians with every election, but don’t, then remain convinced that what we need is more turnover in government to make it more efficient, effective and responsive. Somebodies’ terms need limiting, but who?
Easy: The workforce. The bureaucrats. See, I want term limits, too, but I want them on the people staffing all the departments and agencies that we’re perpetually frustrated with.
No lifers!
Consider, to cite just one example, how many different mayors you’ve seen over the past 20 or 30 years promise to reform the departments of planning and permitting in each county. The mayors have term limits. They come and go. Have any of them succeeded at this reform?
Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi has done more than any predecessor but there’s a long way still to go.
How many Hawai‘i governors — term-limited governors — have promised Hawai‘i a public education second to none? Which of them succeeded? Who is still in place, immune to reform?
What happens in real life is, candidates make bold promises of reform, we elect them, then they announce bold plans for reform and those plans run headfirst into a culture of unfirable civil servants shielded by union protections. These folks don’t even have to noisily and aggressively oppose the reform, all they have to do is … not do it. And wait. Four years later, or eight years later, their antagonist is gone, the staff remains, with its culture of job security over excellence safely intact.
We, the taxpayers and voters, then sit around wondering what happened.
Two Hawai‘i’s
What’s happened is simple: Since statehood, Hawai‘i’s people have steadily split into two camps, those who work for government and everybody else. The appeal of Government Hawai‘i is the security and benefits — lifelong employment, if you want it, totally protected from market forces and competition, with solid benefits like healthcare and retirement, paid for by the rest of us in Real Hawai‘i.
If you think the security and the bennies of government jobs are a trade-off to compensate for low pay, guess again. Government Hawai‘i earns more than Real Hawai‘i.
The annual average wage of a non-government job in Hawai‘i is $52,106, as of 2023, the most recent available in a report from the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.
The average annual wage in state government? $63,309.
In county government? $78,287.
What does Real Hawai‘i get in return? One of the highest tax burdens in America for one thing, and then very little to brag about in high-quality government service. (48th in the nation for taxpayer ROI, for example.)
I would say that that two Hawai‘i’s have hardened into opposing camps, except that’s not exactly true. Government Hawai‘i drives an Us vs Them dynamic, that was never clearer to me than it was during Covid, when Government Hawai‘i showed us that it will shut the rest of down for years at a time given the slightest opportunity. It will also protect itself first, at the expense of the public is supposedly serves, as we see in the lingering effects of the schools closing for so long. That policy made no one safer, but it did mess up the kids. (And have you noticed ever since then, Government Hawai‘i takes the day off for even bad weather like it never did before, while the rest of us soldier on with our work?)
Out here in Real Hawai‘i, we grumble but otherwise settle for apathy (i.e., low voter turnout) or outright flight to states where it feels like a good life is more possible. I don’t know who Government Hawai‘i is going to tax when the last of us moves to Vegas.
With all that in mind, term limits on government service seem like the one revolution we haven’t tried, haven’t even discussed, but should. Say 10, 15 years max, total lifetime employment in government at any level. We want people to stay long enough to learn the ropes and finish things they’ve started, not so long that they just settle in and kill time until retirement.
The upsides:
Breaks up all the pockets of resistance to change. Turnover would occur systemwide, one person at a time, as they age out. Reformers at the top have a chance building support in the workforce among newer staff.
Brings in new people and new ideas in government at every level.
Opens up more opportunities for Government Hawai‘i and Real Hawai‘i to trade places and live in each other’s worlds. This may be the biggest upside — more of us would get a chance to feel like we had a chance to change the system from the inside and deliver the service we’ve always wanted, while more of them would be forced to realize that Real Hawai‘i is something more than subjects to be ruled and tax cows to be milked.
Forces a revolution in how government hires. Using Mayor Blangiardi again as an example, he’s talked about how it took people six months on average to get hired by the City & County of Honolulu when he assumed office. By 2022, he had cut that down to three months. Compared to the speed at which the private sector can hire, that’s still an eternity, and that would have to change immediately to deal with the kind of turnover we need.
(To be fair, government is not alone on this front. In my decade at Pacific Business News, I heard executives at Hawai‘i’s larger companies talk endlessly about a labor shortage. At the same time, I knew plenty of talented people who could not land great jobs. Something is seriously broken in the hiring process, and I suspect HR, especially using automated keyword-based filters on resumes, is to blame. Make Direct Hiring by Managers Great Again!)
The downside:
Loss of expertise, I suppose, but we’ve seen what the accumulated expertise gets us: A chief elections officer who thought a lauhala basket suited the dignity of a Hawai‘i electoral tie-breaker and ended getting his office sued — successfully — and scolded by the state Supreme Court. Scott Nago has worked at the Office of Election for nearly 26 years, almost 17 of those years as its chief election officer. As Civil Beat reported, it’s just about the only place he has ever worked in his life. Well, in the private sector, you can lose your job for bungling things so badly you get sued. Under my plan, the private sector is where he would’ve been sent years ago. Had someone else, perhaps with a wider range of life experience, been at the helm, maybe that person would've made better decisions.
So, OK, there are no downsides.
Term limits on government service. If you like this idea, spread the word. We’d be moving a mountain to make it happen. But that’s got to be better than carrying the mountain of Government Hawai‘i on our shoulders forever.
A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team.
A. Kam Napier can be reached at kam@alohastatedaily.com.
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