Once again, the legislative season is off to a slow start, with just two session days scheduled this month, and committee hearings all online.

That could change if the omicron variant makes its exit, but for now it looks like the third pandemic year for Maine lawmaking.

In truth, expectations weren’t high. The short, four-month session, with elections to follow, always makes it difficult to consider complex and often controversial policy measures.

The lack of personal interaction only increases that effect, as does the dire state of national politics, with differences created daily even when there seems no reason to have them.

Yet 2022 seems likely to be as much about endings as beginnings.

One little-noticed factor in Maine is the prominent effect of term limits, since 1996 the grim reaper of legislative careers, with an especially large impact in the House.

Possibly for the first time, there will be more term-limited Republicans than Democrats. And since Republicans are a minority in the House, and a small one in the Senate, it doesn’t bode well for electoral success, unlike the unceasing national forecasts.

House Republicans will lose 19 of their current 65 members to term limit, while the Democrats will see 17 of their 81 depart.

In the Senate, the split is even: four Republicans and four Democrats, but then Republicans have only 13 seats, against 22 Democrats.

The Senate’s leadership, however, could remain stable: all four current caucus leaders, and President Troy Jackson, have all least one term left.

But the House will undergo big changes at the top, with all five leaders, save one, facing term limits. Assistant Majority Leader Rachel Talbot Ross has another term, making her the odds-on favorite to become the first black person to serve as speaker.

Speaker Ryan Fecteau, just 29, has reached the end of his current career. Majority Leader Michelle Dunphy will also depart, along with Minority Leader Kathleen Dillingham and Assistant Leader Joel Stetkis.

With several House incumbents retiring, some running for other offices – usually the Senate – and others inevitably losing their re-election bids, we will see more than a third, perhaps close to half, of House seats featuring new faces in 2023.

Change can be positive, of course, but this level of enforced change is more disruptive than helpful, with a stressed political system already struggling with large and sometimes contradictory demands.

So it’s ironic that one departee should be John Martin, the end of whose 19 years as House Speaker, from 1975-94, is a primary reason for the enactment of term limits through a 1993 voter referendum.

Martin has served 23 terms in the House, and four in the Senate, and it’s highly doubtful his 52 years in the Legislature will ever be approached, let alone matched.

As a young reformer, Martin brought new rules and new energy to a legislative chamber that sorely needed it, evicting lobbyists and creating transparency, while bringing in professional, nonpartisan staff to handle the annual crush of legislation.

By the estimate of just about everyone but himself, however, Martin stayed on too long, turning a part-time job into a power center that rivaled, and at times seemed to exceed, that of the governor.

He did not go willingly, forced out of the Speaker’s chair by his own caucus; he then attempted a write-in campaign while prohibited from the ballot. He lost, narrowly, sparing a fight over whether he could have been seated.

Martin did attempt one leadership comeback, falling one vote short of becoming Senate president, then retired to his current perch on the Appropriations Committee.

It’s been a good fit. With all the turnover, someone with Martin’s unrivaled knowledge of the budget, and legislative procedures, has been invaluable to his caucus.

As the lawmaker once fondly called the Earl of Eagle Lake, now 80, departs for perhaps the final time, we might ponder another pressing issue: passing the torch.

In the U.S. House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impending retirement brings new attention to the average age of Democratic leadership there: 81.

And as we all know, Joe Biden, at 79, is the oldest president we’ve ever had. For that matter, Janet Mills, Maine’s first woman governor, now 74, is also the oldest person elected to that office.

Building a political career takes time, and persistence. Rather than favoring age and sheer longevity, as we do now, we might want to take a closer look at developing young talent.

The new political generation could arrive sooner than expected; it would be best if they were ready.

Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the author of three books. His first, “Statesman: George Mitchell and the Art of the Possible,” is now out in paperback. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net

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