Anti-Term Limits Amendment Already Costs Citizens Over $1 Million

Anti-Term Limits Amendment Already Costs Citizens Over $1 Million

Little Rock, AR—The anti-term limits amendment set to appear on the November ballot has already cost citizens over $1 million dollars, according to Arkansas Term Limits Chairman Tim Jacob.

“The most deceptive amendment in Arkansas history is now the most expensive amendment in Arkansas history,” Jacob said, referring to the Secretary of State’s cost of printing Issue No. 3 in newspapers across the state.

Jacob emphasized that the steep cost is a problem because the amendment’s popular name and ballot title are not honest about what the measure will do.

“Arkansans will read that Issue 3 ‘establishes’ term limits for the General Assembly, which is not the case,” he said. “If passed, it would double Senate term limits and more than double House term limits, allowing a member of either body to spend 16 years in one seat.”

“We are funding a title that politicians have written to trick us,” he added. “Somehow the founding fathers wrote amendments with less than 22 words, but the Arkansas legislature now comes up with a wasteful 22-page monstrosity. I guess it takes a lot of pages to hide their real purpose; to destroy term limits.”

Jacob, a painter and small businessman in Little Rock, also chaired the successful 2004 effort to defend Arkansas’ term limits from a legislative referral. He formed the Arkansas Term Limits ballot committee in January with Bob Porto of Little Rock and Skip Cook of Maumelle, after legislators refused to pull the deceptive measure off the ballot.

Passed by the Legislature, Issue #3 will more than double legislator terms in the House from 6 to 16 years and in the Senate from 8 to 16 years.  These term limit extensions by the legislature will overturn the limits approved by 60% of the voters in 1992 and 70% of the voters in 2004.  Nowhere in the ballot title does the amendment describe this.  Instead the ballot title uses the word “establish.”  Voters will have to read to the 16^th page of the amendment before being told that it lengthens legislative terms.

Since January, Jacob and his fellow committee members have traveled the state to educate voters on the amendment.