New York Law Blog

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to stick around for another term, and now he’s considering a new law that would lengthen the term limits for elected city officials. As it stands now, city officials are limited to two terms, eight years, of office. Support for the new law came down from several city council members when the New York Times conducted a telephone survey of members.

In the survey, The Times interviewed 38 of the Council’s 51 members, most of whom spoke on the record. Twenty-seven of them said they could support extending term limits, even though city residents have voted twice, in 1993 and 1996, for the existing laws. Eight members opposed altering the rules, three said they remained undecided and the 13 others could not be reached this week.

But members said that the decision to alter term limits — and allow them to seek a third term — would largely rest with the mayor. If he signals his support, many said in interviews, the Council will quickly change the law.

The new law would add another four year term to that which many feel would give those in office more opportunity to pursue legislation they were working on during their current term. It would also allow the public to vote for someone they believe has been effective in the past instead of moving on to someone new.

Besides eliminating the difficulties of looking for a new job, members of the Council said that extending term limits would give voters a chance to re-elect battle-tested leaders, allow members to complete unfinished work and bring stability to city government as New York enters a financial downturn.

Is it such a good idea though? Some believe that the downsides of the new proposed law far outweigh any benefits that may come of it.

“The day we change the term limits is the day we take a step toward dictatorship,” said Tony Avella, a Democrat from Queens who opposes changing the law and is running for mayor. “We seem to have someone in the mayor’s office and speaker’s office who think they can change the law to stay in office.”

Would the vote on the new law be fair however? Is it the will of the people or just the members of city council?

“The issue at hand is not term limits, it’s who decides,” said John C. Liu, a Democrat from Queens who is considering running for comptroller. “Is it 52 people — 51 council members and the mayor — or is it 8 million people?”

“Voting to legislate this could be a kiss of death for decades to come,” Mr. Liu added, “because it becomes an issue that every future campaign opponent can use: unilaterally overturning what the people have very clearly stated is their intent.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Bills, New York state law, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.