Ten Reasons the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society Doesn't Need Term Limits for Board Members

1. We already have term limits -- they're called elections.

2. We already have term limits -- it's called death. Nobody can serve forever, even if elected.

3. There's no clamor for the opportunity to serve on the Co-op's Board -- the Nominating Committee has to scrounge around for qualified candidates -- so nobody is being denied the opportunity to serve because incumbents refuse to make way for them.

4. Incumbents are not entrenched. Earlier this year, the Co-op's members turned an incumbent Board member out of office.

5. Term limits are arbitrary -- why should a person who has served, for example, nine years on the Board be regarded as legitimate but not a person who makes it to ten?

6. The Co-op is a complicated organization, cautious about change to the point of being downright resistant to it at times, and thus it takes a very long time for any individual Board member to get anything accomplished.

7. Perhaps the best opportunity to make a difference as a Board member at our Co-op is to get involved in the cooperative movement at the regional, national and even global levels. But you can't just burst upon those stages -- it takes a long time to become known, trusted and respected.

8. Longterm staff members sometimes find it convenient to ignore or dismiss as irrelevant the views of Board members, regarding Board members as "transient." The Co-op's elected leaders gain credibility and stature if key employees can't just assume they can wait us out.

9. Maine. In that state, the reign of an entrenched House Speaker in the 1970s, 80s and 90s (he had the job for 20 long years) led voters there to impose eight-year term limits on all state legislators. This had the effect of transferring power and influence to the executive branch and, more significantly, lobbyists, the later finding it easy and convenient to manipulate relatively inexperienced lawmakers. The public policy of Maine has palpably suffered as a result.

10. Fundamentally, term limits are profoundly undemocratic. The members of the Co-op should be allowed to elect whomever they want to the Board, without having to comply with arbitrary limitations on that right imposed by their bylaws-amending predecessors.