RALEIGH – I witnessed an exchange in the North Carolina Senate last week that, if staged, would have serve as a dramatic exploration of why longtime incumbency and gerrymandered security are corrosive of republican government. Unfortunately, it was a very real and unscripted moment.

The setting was the Senate Finance Committee, where members were debated a tax package that would lead to another half-cent increase in the sales tax and the repeal of “middle-class tax relief” enacted last year supposedly to offset the impact of the 2001 sales-tax hike. Republican senators were arguing against the bill, arguing that it would harm an already weakened economy and that low spending, not higher taxes, was the proper solution to the budget gap.

Democrats disagreed. So far, no big deal. Garden-variety clash of political philosophies.

But then Republican Sen. Austin Allran of Catawba County spoke up on a specific concern: Medicaid. He argued that the program was out of control, and cited as one example the problem of non-poor families arranging their finances in order to qualify for Medicaid once a family member entered a nursing home.

Committee Democrats responded with derision. Panel Chairman David Hoyle of Gaston County said that he had never heard of families gaming the Medicaid system in this way, and that he had personally counseled constituents against trying to take advantage of the program. Sen. Tony Rand (D-Cumberland) then snorted that if Allran really had knowledge of families doing so, he was a witness to a felony and had a responsibility to report the miscreants to the state. Rand demanded that Allran supply names immediately.

I know this sounds like a trifle. But it was a telling moment. Their comments exposed Hoyle and Rand as either grossly ignorant of one of the basic issues in Medicaid policy – there are entire industries of lawyers and financial planners devoted to the practice of shielding assets, and books available in public libraries on how to do so — or, worse, as dishonest and dismissive of serious inquiry.

I happen to think that Hoyle and Rand are too smart not to know that Allran, albeit timidly and somewhat vaguely, was making a serious point about runaway spending. I think they just didn’t want to hear it, and that Rand in particular thought it proper to make fun of a fellow senator as a way of marginalizing and silencing him.

These are the inevitable consequences of unchallenged power. Even the best of public servants, and I do respect both longtime Democratic senators for their intellects and abilities, turn into jerks when they face little prospect of losing power. In the Senate, and often in the House, budgets are drafted in private, germane amendments are ruled out of order, and duly elected legislators are simply ignored on the chamber floor when they seek to be recognized for a motion. Some legislative leaders swagger around the General Assembly as if the world revolved around them, oblivious to the fact that out in the real world of North Carolina they are largely the objects of derision or scorn.

There is value in rotation in office, as even the ancient Greeks and Romans knew. There is nothing partisan or ideological about the problem. Republicans get corrupt and dictatorial in places where they have enjoyed the powers of incumbency and gerrymandered districts to escape the wrath of voters.

It’s not enough, by the way, to vote a single group out of office. The problem is institutional. That’s why I favor term limits, session limits, tax and expenditure limits, and other means of creating a truly citizen legislature where longtime service is neither possible nor desirable.

Oh, and you can’t rely on voluntary pledges to do the right thing or leave office, either. In 2000, Rand took a pledge not to raise taxes. Then he broke it. Why not? He’s in a safe seat.