We, the voters of California, enacted terms limits in the 1990s, largely because some incumbents in state office had become exceedingly powerful in their control of processes and outcomes. The particular target of the California term limit initiative was Willie Brown, a powerful, progressive Democrat, who had consolidated power as the Speaker of the California House of Representatives. A ballot initiative, backed by his Republican opponents, creating term limits was placed directly before the voters, and it was approved. The unforeseen consequence is that we now have musical chairs in our state capital. In the most recent election, ended this past week, the former Attorney General became the Treasurer, the former Insurance Commissioner became the Lieutenant Governor, a number of state representatives became state senators, and a number of state senators switched over to become representatives. Anyone who thought that we were going to get new blood and new perspectives by the use of term limits was mistaken. In California, we're reshuffling the deck every two years, but we're still playing with the same cards. Another consequence of terms limits is that they empower staff over the elected representatives. When the elected representatives change, the people who provide continuity, history, and leadership become the people who have the most experience. With term limits, those people are staff. Neither in California nor in ICANN do we have term limits for employed staff (nor should we). In this way, term limits potentially could weaken the Council by placing too much responsibility for continuity and leadership in the hands of ICANN's Staff. Until we've looked at the entire GNSO structure, nothing in the current term limits proposal would prevent, for example, the ISP Constituency from electing the current BC Representatives as its Councilors, in exchange for the Business Constituency electing the current ISP Constituency's representatives as its Councilors. Even if you tried to prevent that too, the system still could be gamed by having proxies stand in place as "councilors" for others. If someone or some constituency is determined to keep certain individuals involved, you can't prevent that in the current structure of ICANN. In my view, the best way to get new blood and new perspectives is to recruit new individuals and companies with interests in ICANN's work. Over time, those people will assume the roles we need them to assume. We don't need the short term solution of term limits that, in time, may create more problems than it solves. Bret