HELENA — A Senate committee on Tuesday tabled a proposed constitutional amendment referendum to end term limits.

Shortly after the brief hearing, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 9-3 to table, and likely kill, Senate Bill 383, by Sen. Bradley Hamlett, D-Cascade.

It sought to put a proposal on the November 2016 ballot to eliminate term limits on legislators and statewide offices including governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, auditor, superintendent of public instruction and secretary of state.

In 1992, Montana voters by a 2-to-1 margin approved a constitutional initiative to impose term limits. Under term limits, legislators can serve in one chamber for eight years out of a 16-year period, but nothing forbids them from running for the other house. Statewide elected officials, except for the state Supreme Court justices, can serve in the office they hold for eight years out of a 16-year period.

Before voting to table the bill, Sen. Mary Sheehy Moe, D-Great Falls, said, “I don’t think this is an initiative the Legislature will pass because of the obvious conflict of interest. It will have to be citizens.”

Sen. Cliff Larsen, D-Missoula, said he voted for term limits in 1992 but now believes they are “a terrible idea.”

He opposed the motion to table the bill, saying: “To have a conversation about the subject is critical.”

At the hearing, Hamlett said he also voted for term limits but has changed his mind. He said he wouldn’t be affected by his bill because he would be unable to run again anyway because redistricting created a district from which he couldn’t win.

The Legislature already has enough turnover because of death, illness, divorce, disinterest, burnout, lawmakers’ other jobs and redistricting, Hamlett said.

“When we’re termed out, that institutional knowledge walks out the door,” he said. “We have had the grand Montana experience. We know the crucial disadvantage of term limits.”’

Testifying for the bill was John Esp, a former legislator from Big Timber, who represented the Montana Association of Counties.

“They have many members that believe term limits have not supported Montana well,” Esp said.

The lone opponent was former legislator Ed Butcher of Winifred, who led the 1992 campaign to pass the constitutional amendment to pass term limits and has been their leading public spokesman since then. Butcher said he was speaking for the vast majority of Montanans who couldn’t attend the hearing because they are working at their jobs.

“Nearly every session, this bill has come before the body,” Butcher said. “It’s brought up by legislators who think they’re irreplaceable.”

Butcher said three groups — the lobbyists, bureaucrats and media — want to see “career legislators.”

“The idea of new energy and new ideas are not a bad concept to bring into a deliberative body like this,” Butcher said.

He added, “What does this cry for institutional memory bring to the process?”

That’s what has happened with Congress, he said, “where seniority and senility go very much hand in hand when you get into the governing process.”

In 2004, the Legislature put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to extend term limits for legislators to 12 years from the current eight years. Voters rejected it 69 percent to 31 percent.