BISMARCK — Three attempts to extend lifetime term limits for state lawmakers have been introduced in the North Dakota Legislature just three years after voters passed a measure to establish them.

Voters approved the citizen-initiated measure in 2022

to place an eight-year term limit on state lawmakers in the North Dakota Constitution, including a section that prohibits any member of the Legislative Assembly from proposing changes to the rule.

The only way to change

term limits in the state Constitution

is through another citizen-initiated measure.

House Concurrent Resolution 3034

looks to remove the prohibition on lawmakers proposing constitutional changes related to term limits and would allow a senator or representative to serve for 12 cumulative years, or three terms. A legislator could return to the same chamber and serve another 12 years after a four-year break.

If passed, changes brought by the legislation would have to be approved by voters.

HCR 3034 also places 12-year term limits on state agency leaders — like the attorney general and secretary of state — while capping the governor and lieutenant governors’ terms at eight years.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 4028

lists the same term limits as HCR 3034 but includes a provision allowing some sections to be overruled if challenged in court without eliminating the entirety of the resolution.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 4008

would limit legislators to serving for 12 years, or three complete terms, but does not include limits for other state leaders.

In a hearing for SCR 4008, members of the Senate State and Local Government Committee discussed how the resolution could be vulnerable to legal challenges since it seeks to make constitutional changes to term limits.

Committee chair Sen. Kristin Roers, R-Fargo, asked Eric Winters, a U.S. Term Limits Foundation attorney who opposed the resolution, if he’d ever had clients “purposely do things to get things into the courts.”

“You don’t recognize that this might be one of those (instances)?” Roers said before the committee endorsed the legislation.

Sponsor Rep. Jim Kasper, R-Fargo, said the loss of “institutional knowledge” to term limits is detrimental to the “intense” lawmaking process.

“The average person in North Dakota does not understand how hard it is to be a good legislator and how much legislators try to do the right thing,” he said.

Nearly half of the legislators currently serving will hit their term limit by 2028,

a Legislative Council analysis of term limit impacts found.

The other half will hit their limit by 2030.

Kasper said term limits place more work on the Legislative Council, the office that facilitates the lawmaking process. It has the second-lowest number of permanent legislative staffers in the country compared to similar entities in other states.

Term limit proponents maintain lawmakers spending less time in office makes room for more perspectives while also preventing people from becoming career politicians in a state with a citizen-led Legislature.

Sen. Jeff Magrum, R-Hazelton, said term limits inspire new ideas and collaboration between lawmakers, whereas before “it was almost as if they didn’t want to share the knowledge with fears of losing their position,” he said.

“If things look like they’re going backwards, then go get the signatures,” Magrum added. “Get it on the ballot and make your case to the people.”

SCR 4028 has a hearing scheduled for Thursday, March 6, at 1 p.m. in the Senate State and Local Government Committee. The hearing for HCR 3034 will be at 10 a.m. Friday in the House Government and Veterans Affairs Committee. A vote on SCR 4008 has not been scheduled.