Term limits for legislators? Perish the thought. Though a constitutional amendment to limit the governor to two terms flew through the Legislature.

Actually, term limits is an issue on which this blind squirrel has come close to finding a nut. Term limits presume that the voters are too stupid to know when a certain elected official has worn out his or her welcome. They are a bad idea for governors, and a worse idea for legislators, where experience and hard-won resistance to fad and twaddle are necessary.

But lawmakers carry that we-serve-at-the-pleasure-of-the-voters excuse too far when they are ready to ban gifts to state employees but not to themselves. They won't even lower the threshold for making those gifts public. The idea that a lawmaker who gets too cozy with donors can always be thrown out at the next election presumes at least two things that are not true.

One is that voters will know about that relationship, when reporting requirements are shallow at best. The other is that, in Utah's virtual one-party state, the electorate will have a viable alternative on the ballot, a challenger flush enough to come out from under the shadow of a lobbyist-enriched incumbent.

The move to stop the revolving door of state government managers to the higher-paying world of lobbying is made revolting by its lack of application to outgoing legislators.

Worst of all is the bill that would end the existing ability of state workers to turn unused sick leave into post-retirement health insurance, even as lawmakers keep that ability for themselves and plan to extend it to such personages as the lieutenant governor and attorney general.

This glaring double standard is justified by the claim that legislators don't get paid much, which they don't, and can put a great deal of time and stomach acid into the job, which they do. But the workers who would be stung by this proposal - highway patrolmen, prison guards, snowplow drivers - have literally put their lives on the line for a career that gives them little wealth and no value as lobbyists.

The idea could save the state some money. But the Legislature's own fiscal analysts wouldn't hazard a guess as to how much, given that a change could encourage workers to use, rather than bank, their sick leave and, perhaps, to retire early and put more strain on the state's retirement accounts.

Being a legislator is, indeed, a difficult and often thankless job. But a little more “do unto others” would make that job easier to do, and easier to take.