ALL THESE LITTLE PIGGIES STICK TOGETHER DINE AT PARTY TROUGH, THEN ENJOY LOTS OF LUCRATIVE DESSERTS AFTERWARD.

Byline: Thomas D. Elias

NO American ever did more than George Washington to promote the idea of limited time in office combined with delight and relief at returning to private life. The first president could have been king if he'd liked, but preferred to leave after two terms - an example followed by all presidents until Franklin D. Roosevelt.

His healthy preference shaped a nation, but today's term limits, including California's 1990 law, accomplish little that's good.

Yes, there's a constant parade of new faces in the Legislature. But term limits have not even come close to producing the Washingtonian ideal of citizen politicians who gladly return home after a few years of public service.

Rather, once they get their snouts into the public trough, today's piggish politicians want to stay there forever. To do this, new legislators must toe their party's line, adhere to the wishes of whoever is in power at a given moment and never vote independently. For it takes party money to run for another office; it also takes party approval to win appointment to high-paying state jobs once a legislator is termed out.

So long as a pol does toe the line, it seems almost anything can be forgiven. That goes for Democrats, Republicans and those few somewhere in between.

Republicans, for instance, awarded their nomination for state treasurer last year to Greg Conlon, head of the state Public Utilities Commission under ex-Gov. Pete Wilson. While at the PUC, Conlon played a big role in creating the electricity deregulation plan that decimated California's power system. He was forgiven, his massive error not even mentioned during the party primary campaign.

If Democrats please their current leadership, of course, their futures become even more secure. Take Steve Peace. The former state senator from El Cajon voted consistently with Gov. Gray Davis on almost everything that came up during the first Davis term.

But he was the chairman of the 1996 joint legislative committee that created deregulation, doing the bidding of utility companies that wanted their ``stranded assets'' paid off by consumers no matter what the consequences.

Peace, known as the ``father of deregulation'' for his role in bringing home a unanimous legislative vote for the plan, was so disgraced by its abject failure that he had to abandon a planned run for secretary of state in 2002.

Never mind. No sooner was he termed out in December than Davis made him California's finance director, with prime responsibility for resolving the state's record budget deficit. Then he gave Peace's wife, Cheryl, a choice $117,818-a-year job on the state Integrated Waste Management Board.

The question: If he helped concoct a disaster in his last big assignment, why believe Peace will do anything else in his new one? And while his deregulation ideas proved to be garbage, is his wife an expert on trash?

But Steve Peace paid his dues, demonstrated his loyalty to governor and party (after a 1980s fling at being an independent assemblyman). Now he's got his reward.

So does termed out state Sen. Maurice Johannessen, elected twice as a Republican, but a rare GOP moderate. He twice voted for Davis budgets over the objections of other Republicans; Davis made him director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs the moment he left the Senate.

So who says cronyism and political payoffs aren't alive and well in Sacramento? In both parties and everywhere between.

Davis gave Brett J. Granlund, who served three terms during the 1990s as a Republican assemblyman from Yucaipa, east of San Bernardino, a job on the state Board of Prison Terms. Salary: $99,693.

The press release announcing Granlund's appointment revealed he got it for the same reason Johannessen received his reward. ``During his tenure as a legislator,'' the handout said, ``he crossed party lines to encourage cooperation. ...''

But why should the former owner of Granlund Candies decide who gets paroled and who does not? Maybe it's because he, too, voted for some Davis bills.

Don't forget Don Novey, former head of the powerful state prison guards union, one of the biggest donors to all of Davis' campaigns. He's now a $114,191-a-year member of the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

It was the same under Wilson, although term limits were still too new in his second term for him to bail out as many cronies as Davis or reward as many colleagues. Ex-Assemblyman Trice Harvey of Bakersfield got a job on the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Ex-state Sen. Marian Bergeson of Orange County became state education secretary.

Davis' current cabinet and staff are also loaded with ex-lawmakers.

So term limits do put new faces into office, but they surely don't get rid of old ones. Rather, the old faces merely move around, often getting cushy jobs with high pay for virtually no work.

But term limits remain among the most popular of state laws. They are further proof that Washington's good friend Thomas Jefferson was correct when he said, ``In a democracy, the people get precisely the government they deserve.''