Term Limit Debate Again
Can the Council Leadership Step Up to Real Reform?
By Joseph Mercurio
July 11, 2002
The City Council is debating term limits yet again. Legislatures are never happy with the fact that voters want them to leave relatively quickly--eight years in this case. Death, retirement and incitement do not create enough turnover from the public's point of view.
Or, for that matter, from the point of view of potential candidates--who prefer to run in open seats (districts without incumbents) where races are more competitive. Election reforms, other than term limits, would make it easer to challenge incumbent elected officials when they are not performing. Voters would not need term limits and the extemporary members would not be lost.
The current debate about term limits focuses on the imbalance created every ten years by a technical flaw, which results from the way the city handles reapportionment. The United States Census counts how many of us there are and exactly where we live every ten years. It is only a snapshot in time because New York has very large turnover in population every year.
District boundaries change as populations and neighborhoods shift. When it's all over, political shenanigans aside, candidates run in districts that are in some cases drastically altered. It is necessary to make these alterations or districts would get imbalanced in population size over time, eroding the power of some voters while inflating others.
In politics, more happens out of chaos than out of conspiracy. This is one of those cases where chaos has taken over. There would be no reason to have a debate about how unfair it is for some Council members to be thrown out after only six years while other get to stay for longer than the eight years. Council members run every four years except for a two-year term, which occurs when the city does reapportionment.
The council leadership is correct. The system causes an imbalance and should be fixed. All members should be limited to the same length and number of terms. The fix should be the elimination of the two-year election going forward, something that should have been done last year. The election for City Council in 2001 should have been, and certainly every year following the census in the future should be for four years.
Elimination of the two-year term for a City Council member every ten years eliminates the imbalance.
By making that change now while we are debating balancing fairness to the members who get only a six-year run, we solve the problem at its root. There is no reason for the two-year term. Reapportionment could be done in time for the normal City Council election that follows the census.
The data needed for reapportionment can be made available from the federal government and the city can do the necessary reapportionment in time. That is the way other jurisdictions handle the problem. We do not have to look far to see that it is true--New Jersey routinely does its statewide legislature reapportionment the year after the census and Westchester County does its local legislative reapportionment at that time.
Not only would the city eliminate the irrational imbalance in term lengths for City Council members, it would save the city money. The extra City Council election cost nearly $4 million dollars for the Board of Elections to conduct the election. In addition, candidates running for reelection use the city's campaign matching program for possibly another $5 million. That's nearly $10 million dollars or more that the city can ill afford in these hard times.
The leadership should be sensitive to this type of reform. If they are going to go through the bother of protecting a handful of incumbents--in this case appropriately--they should stay on the side of the angels and make a substantial improvement. They should change for the future the year reapportionment is done and eliminate the two-year term.
Of course the better reform would be to dispense with term limits altogether while changing the City Charter to establish non-partisan municipal elections held every four years. Eliminate party primaries, have all candidates run in an election that has all the qualified voters eligible to vote, followed by a runoff if no one receives enough votes.
In this type of election, the existing political parties could still have the power to designate or endorse a candidate in the race if they chose, while other members of the party run on independent lines. Some other cities do non-partisan elections in that manner.
Will the Council leadership step up to real reform? More later.
