By JOHN McCARTHY
The Associated Press
12/11/01 5:33 PM

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A poll released Tuesday that found a majority of Ohio voters do not want to get rid of term limits indicates the Legislature is doing its job, Senate President Richard Finan said.

However, Finan cautioned that voters haven't yet seen the full effects of what voters approved in 1992.

The Ohio Poll, sponsored by the University of Cincinnati, found that 62 percent of registered voters opposed a constitutional amendment that would remove term limits, while 32 percent supported such an amendment and 6 percent didn't know.

Fifty-nine percent opposed a constitutional amendment that would increase the number of consecutive years that lawmakers could serve from eight to 12 years, while 37 percent favored it and 5 percent didn't know, the poll found.

Those numbers are down from another Ohio Poll taken in May 1999 -- before term limits took effect -- that found 70 percent of voters opposed the removal of term limits. The 1999 poll also found that 65 percent of Ohio voters opposed an extension of how long lawmakers can serve.

The Ohio Poll, conducted by the university's Institute for Policy Research, surveyed 646 randomly picked registered Ohio voters by telephone from Oct. 24 through Nov. 8. The poll's margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Voters in 1992 overwhelmingly approved limiting state representatives to four consecutive two-year terms and state senators to two consecutive four-year terms. The term limits took affect this year when 46 freshmen were sworn into the House and seven into the Senate.

Thus far, the Legislature has been able to pass and correct a balanced budget, the major business of the current session as it reaches its halfway point. That's thanks to strong leadership in both the House and the Senate, Finan, a Cincinnati Republican, said.

"People haven't seen the effects of term limits yet, frankly, because we've been able to get the job done," Finan, a Cincinnati Republican, said.

House Speaker Larry Householder, a Glenford Republican who assumed the post when term limits knocked out fellow Republican Jo Ann Davidson in January, had done a good job of holding the freshmen together, Finan said.

The Senate, where six of the new members are former representatives, likely won't see a difference for at least two years when many veteran senators will be forced out. Finan must leave the Senate at the end of the year.

Labor and other groups asked focus groups last summer whether they supported extending the period in which lawmakers can serve.

The focus groups initially didn't like the idea, but their opposition softened when they realized they couldn't vote for their favorite lawmakers and that the loss of experience could affect the Legislature's performance, House Speaker Larry Householder said. He was not surprised by the poll's findings.

An extensive pre-session training program helped the House freshmen get to know how the Legislature works, said Householder, a Glenford Republican.

"With the work we did and the relationships we built, we were able to do things that folks always said you couldn't do with term limits," Householder said.

David Zanotti, president of the Ohio Roundtable and term-limits advocate in 1992, said he hopes the poll quiets talk about a ballot issue that would remove or alter them.

"There's no question that it would be a losing proposition. People in Ohio like term limits," Zanotti said.

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On the Net:

Ohio Poll: http://www.ipr.uc.edu/ohiopoll/pressReleases.cfm