Editorial: Term Limits Must Stay, Self-Serving Politicians Must Go
September 12th, 2008
Men confronting their mortality have been known to do silly things in middle age—buy expensive motorcycles, explore the comforts of women other than their wives, invest in sad and unconvincing hair plugs. Now city politicians confronting their electoral mortality are about to do something just as silly: attempt to argue that when New Yorkers voted in term limits in 1993 and then reaffirmed their choice in 1996, they were confused, or at least unclear, about the number of terms involved.
This is an offensively cynical approach to New Yorkers and democracy, and has to stop.
Voters have been known to change their minds over time, and elected officials should certainly be open to rethinking laws which have proven wrong or problematic in implementation. The 18th Amendment, creating Prohibition, after all, only lasted 14 years before the 21st Amendment washed it away.
But the members of Congress who reversed course were not just desperate for a drink. (Well, some of them might have been.) They were responding to an outcry from Americans who had not anticipated just how unhappy they would be with the imposition on their civil liberties and underestimated the rampant crime which would sprout up around bootlegging. Prohibition did not work, so Prohibition had to go.
Those in city government now clamoring for a change in term limits likewise argue that they are responding to unintended consequences: restricting city officials to just eight years in office has forced them to politick prematurely and keeps them from accumulating the expertise they need to do their jobs best. Voters may have wanted term limits 15 years ago, and then again 12 years ago, the argument goes, but they were wrong, they did not understand what limits would really do to the city once in place. Term limits are not working—insist some of the very people whose jobs are on the line and owe the openings in the seats they occupy to the 2001 term limits purge—so term limits have to go.
In a city where incumbents faced real challenges for any of the citywide races in 2005, or where more than two members of the City Council had to worry about re-election in either the primary or general elections that year, term limits might not make sense. In New York City, they are essential to keeping up the activity and dynamism of the city government.
But too many people in city government seem to feel otherwise. Keep term limits if we must, they say, but stretch the allowed time in office to 12 years—at least until late 2012, when, presumably, these same people would argue that the limits need to then be extended to four terms. That, they argue, would make municipal government function better.
Given that the new agitation did not begin until late summer, there was not time to put a new Charter revision referendum on the ballot for voters this year, before the ’09 elections (oops!). That leaves the elected officials in charge of deciding whether they will grant themselves four more years through legislative fiat.
This sounds a whole lot like a self-serving, egotistic ploy by those facing their own extinction. But if there really is a case to be made that extending term limits would improve city government and that having the current Council members and citywide officials continue in office past next year, they should make it on specific grounds. What precisely would the Council and the citywide officials be able to accomplish if granted the ability to run for an additional term or two? And which laws or actions that they have taken over the last seven years will they admit were not up to par because they lacked the expertise to handle them properly?
Instead, there should be a movement within the Council to finalize the debate on term limits once and for all. And while they are doing so, Council members and Mayor Michael Bloomberg should consider adding in some additional provisions to make city elections more competitive, like reducing the length of Council terms to two years while keeping the limit at eight years in office, and eliminating matching funds for incumbents seeking re-election. That is the kind of re-examination of the system that the city actually needs—not the current kind of monkey business.
Next year, term limits will boot out some elected officials who are mediocre at best, but will also remove some very talented and excellent people from office. That is the price we pay for having term limits. But the benefit is a better democracy—the worst form of government, as Winston Churchill said, except for all the others.
The question city officials now have to answer is whether they believe in democracy, or whether they are just politicians thirsty for another drink.
This is an offensively cynical approach to New Yorkers and democracy, and has to stop.
Voters have been known to change their minds over time, and elected officials should certainly be open to rethinking laws which have proven wrong or problematic in implementation. The 18th Amendment, creating Prohibition, after all, only lasted 14 years before the 21st Amendment washed it away.
But the members of Congress who reversed course were not just desperate for a drink. (Well, some of them might have been.) They were responding to an outcry from Americans who had not anticipated just how unhappy they would be with the imposition on their civil liberties and underestimated the rampant crime which would sprout up around bootlegging. Prohibition did not work, so Prohibition had to go.
Those in city government now clamoring for a change in term limits likewise argue that they are responding to unintended consequences: restricting city officials to just eight years in office has forced them to politick prematurely and keeps them from accumulating the expertise they need to do their jobs best. Voters may have wanted term limits 15 years ago, and then again 12 years ago, the argument goes, but they were wrong, they did not understand what limits would really do to the city once in place. Term limits are not working—insist some of the very people whose jobs are on the line and owe the openings in the seats they occupy to the 2001 term limits purge—so term limits have to go.
In a city where incumbents faced real challenges for any of the citywide races in 2005, or where more than two members of the City Council had to worry about re-election in either the primary or general elections that year, term limits might not make sense. In New York City, they are essential to keeping up the activity and dynamism of the city government.
But too many people in city government seem to feel otherwise. Keep term limits if we must, they say, but stretch the allowed time in office to 12 years—at least until late 2012, when, presumably, these same people would argue that the limits need to then be extended to four terms. That, they argue, would make municipal government function better.
Given that the new agitation did not begin until late summer, there was not time to put a new Charter revision referendum on the ballot for voters this year, before the ’09 elections (oops!). That leaves the elected officials in charge of deciding whether they will grant themselves four more years through legislative fiat.
This sounds a whole lot like a self-serving, egotistic ploy by those facing their own extinction. But if there really is a case to be made that extending term limits would improve city government and that having the current Council members and citywide officials continue in office past next year, they should make it on specific grounds. What precisely would the Council and the citywide officials be able to accomplish if granted the ability to run for an additional term or two? And which laws or actions that they have taken over the last seven years will they admit were not up to par because they lacked the expertise to handle them properly?
Instead, there should be a movement within the Council to finalize the debate on term limits once and for all. And while they are doing so, Council members and Mayor Michael Bloomberg should consider adding in some additional provisions to make city elections more competitive, like reducing the length of Council terms to two years while keeping the limit at eight years in office, and eliminating matching funds for incumbents seeking re-election. That is the kind of re-examination of the system that the city actually needs—not the current kind of monkey business.
Next year, term limits will boot out some elected officials who are mediocre at best, but will also remove some very talented and excellent people from office. That is the price we pay for having term limits. But the benefit is a better democracy—the worst form of government, as Winston Churchill said, except for all the others.
The question city officials now have to answer is whether they believe in democracy, or whether they are just politicians thirsty for another drink.
