Speakers Monday prescribed a host of remedies -- particularly ending or extending term limits for lawmakers -- to fix a rancorous Montana Legislature that bitterly adjourned in April without completing its work.

Other speakers at the two-day conference sponsored by the Burton K. Wheeler Center at Montana State University suggested if legislators met for shorter periods annually, instead of one 90-minute session every other year, they might learn to get along better with each other.

But other speakers said Montana voters have made it clear: they want to limit the terms of their elected officials and they oppose annual legislative sessions.

"My sense is you're going to have an uphill battle to convince Montanans that term limits are bad," said Craig Wilson, a political scientist at Montana State University-Billings.

Sen. Joe Balyeat, R-Bozeman, blamed the level of partisanship not on term limits, but on the legislative redistricting that followed the 2000 census in which Republicans contend they got a raw deal. But one Democrat, former Sen. Fred Van Valkenburg of Missoula, countered that Democrats got the short end of the stick during the 1990s redistricting, which led to a decade of Republican control of the House and Senate.

The conference was entitled "Strengthening Montana's Legislative Process: Ideas and Strategies for Reform." It attracted a number of current and former legislators.

But what that title conveyed to most of the Montana speakers was one thing: figuring out how to improve this state's legislative process after the stormy 2007 session.

With Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans the House, the two chambers angrily adjourned without passing a state budget, their lone constitutional duty, and blaming the other chamber. That forced Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer to call a special session in May where lawmakers passed the budget, a tax rebate and school funding.

Alan Rosenthal, a Rutgers University political scientist and national authority on state legislatures, said legislatures today suffer from public cynicism, partisanship, less time to study issues and a lack of commitment to legislators by its members.

Montana was among 20 states that adopted term limits, Rosenthal said, and one of 15 states that still have them. By a 2-to-1 vote in 1992, Montanans passed a constitutional initiative to limit the terms of statewide elected officials and state legislators to eight years.

Rosenthal criticized term limits and said Montana would be "the easiest place" for an attempted repeal, although he conceded, "I don't think it would be easy." Even if the attempt failed, he said it could give voters "lessons that they ought to have."

But Balyeat said term limits are being wrongly blamed for partisanship. Politics are more contentious everywhere, he said, because of the increased flow of information available from the Internet and elsewhere.

"In order to be mudslinging, you have to have mud," Balyeat said.

Term limits also have opened the doors to people running for the Legislature who before term limits had "no interest in sitting in the back row for 30 years while someone else runs the show," Balyeat said.

However, a panel of former legislators decried the increased partisanship, and some blamed it on term limits.

With term-limited legislators, "I think the governor ends up with a lot more power with term limits," said former Sen. Mignon Waterman, D-Helena, said.

Former Sen. Lorents Grosfield, R-Big Timber, said in recent years, "we haven't seen very big ideas go very far."

"I do think with term limits, you have people who don't really have the experience and the credibility to push really big pieces of legislation," said Van Valkenburg, a former Senate president.

Former Sen. Fred Thomas, R-Stevensville, a leader in the 1992 term-limits movement, said he still favors term limits, but would support extending them for lawmakers. But legislators must listen to the voters, Thomas said, and in 2004, Montanans soundly defeated a plan to increase legislative term limits to 12 years.