COLUMBUS — Backers of a plan to ask voters to tighten Ohio’s legislative term limits are admittedly playing a cat-and-mouse game with legislators talking about their own proposal to loosen the limits.

But even if voters ultimately impose lifetime caps on legislative service, it would still be a long time before any lawmakers, some of whom have been in Columbus for decades, would be shown the door under the stricter rules.

If a ballot vote occurs, it would most likely take place during the November, 2016, general election, said Maurice Thompson, executive director of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, which wrote the proposed constitutional amendment for the Florida-based organization U.S. Term Limits.

“The plan of U.S. Term Limits right now is to see what [the legislature is] going to do,” Mr. Thompson said. “Citizens have to submit valid signatures 125 days before the election. The legislature has until 90 days before the election.

“What we don’t want to see happen is legislative inaction through July of next year, and then all of a sudden they do what they did this year [with a proposed anti-monopoly amendment] and move quickly out of nowhere to put something on the ballot.”

It is conceivable voters could be faced with competing proposals going in opposite directions on the same ballot.

Attorney General Mike DeWine has until Tuesday to sign off on whether the language the group has submitted to show would-be petition signers is an accurate representation of what the proposed amendment would do.

Currently, under a constitutional amendment that voters adopted in 1992, Ohio state legislators can serve no more than eight consecutive elected years in one chamber — four two-year terms in the House or two four-year terms in the Senate.

But some lawmakers have reset that clock every few years by moving back and forth between chambers. Despite term limits, there are three members near the three-decade mark in the General Assembly — Sen. Ron Amstutz (R., Wooster), 35 years; Sen. Scott Oelslager (R., Canton), 31 years; and Sen. Randy Gardner (R., Bowling Green), two months shy of 30 years.

“Candidly, I haven’t thought much about either proposal, and I’m not interested in spending any time on this issue,” Mr. Gardner said. “I have plenty to do in the General Assembly other than debate something that is already in the state constitution.

“I believe if you have competitive districts and fair elections, whether someone has been in office two years or many years should be up to the voters.”

Two other northwest Ohio lawmakers have already exceeded 12 years, the lifetime cap that U.S. Term Limits envisions. Rep. Teresa Fedor and Sen. Edna Brown, both Toledo Democrats, have served 15 and 14 years, respectively.

The proposed “Strengthening Term Limits on State Legislatures” amendment, if approved by voters, would greatly reduce but not altogether eliminate the practice of switching chambers. But eventually the lawmaker would run up against that 12-year lifetime cap, regardless of chamber.

Unlike current term limits, time that a lawmaker serves as a result of appointment to a vacancy would count toward the cap in addition to their own elected terms.

Within that 12-year lifetime cap, a lawmaker could not serve more than eight years in one chamber.

This new clock, however, would not start ticking until Jan. 1, 2017, at the earliest, presumably after voters had just approved the constitutional amendment and elected their latest senators and representatives.

That means that those returning to Columbus, even those who’ve been here for decades, could continue to move back and forth for another 12 years before they would be forced out by the new lifetime cap.

The legislatively created Ohio Constitutional Modernization Committee will return from its summer break Thursday. It has generally talked about expanding the current eight-year chamber limit to 12 years with no lifetime cap.

“We’ll come out and vote them both down,” said David Zanotti, CEO of the Cleveland-based American Policy Roundtable. He was involved in the 1992 coalition that passed Ohio’s first eight-year term limit.

The bipartisan coalition of Ohio organizations intentionally steered clear of a “death penalty” for legislators, he said.

“We have broken the stranglehold on seniority, whereby a single person could run the state by accruing so much seniority that you could be speaker for life or Senate president for life,” Mr. Zanotti said. “It’s far different from the days when you couldn’t conduct business in this state unless you had the approval of Vern Riffe, Stanley Aronoff, or someone like them.”

The presence of two competing proposals on the same ballot again raises the question of what would happen if voters approve both, despite their opposite objectives. The constitution states that the one receiving the most votes would prevail.

But Secretary of State Jon Husted also has suggested that questions directly placed on the ballot by the General Assembly would dominate because they take effect immediately upon passage while citizen initiatives wait 30 days to take effect.

He offered that opinion in connection with the Nov. 3 showdown between a legislatively proposed amendment to thwart the writing of new commercial monopolies into the constitution and a marijuana-legalization amendment that he and other opponents contend would set up a pot monopoly.

Mr. Husted, a former House speaker, said at first glance the same might apply here.

“Term limits aren’t going away,” he said. “... If you gave voters the choice between four and 12, they’d pick four.”

Mr. Thompson said he doesn’t buy the argument that Ohioans sacrifice knowledge and experience by forcing talented individuals to leave Columbus according to an arbitrary calendar.

“I don’t see any particular talent, expertise, nobility, or ethical code,” he said. “They tend to be tied in with special interests and do what’s best for political parties rather than for the taxpayers of Ohio.”

Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.

First Published September 7, 2015, 4:00 a.m.