The FLoG Blog had some technical problems but is up and running again. I thought we’d take a closer look at the term limits issue in New York. Here is a little bit of research I did this morning (comments welcome!):<\/p>\n
It seems like the claim that the City Council can override the\u00a0voter-passed term limit referendums is more legally problematic than\u00a0some have made it out to be. In most cases there is no reason that a\u00a0City Council local law cannot override a voter-passed referendum (see\u00a0Caruso v. City of New York), but the City Charter and the New York\u00a0State Municipal Home Rule law provide an exception to this rule: Any\u00a0law that seeks to “change the term of an elective officer” must be\u00a0passed-by New York City voters (Chapter 2 \u00a7 38(4) of the NYC Charter).\u00a0On its face, this would seem to preclude the possibility of passing\u00a0the Bloomberg-law without a referendum, but it seems like the Mayor\u00a0must be basing his judgment that a City Council-passed law would be\u00a0sufficient on a 2003 New York State Appellate Division ruling that the\u00a0City Council could pass a law allowing City Councilmembers who had\u00a0served a four year term and a two year term (during the transition\u00a0from four-year to two-year terms) to serve another two-year term even\u00a0though it would be their third term, otherwise in violation of the\u00a0city’s term limits (Golden v. New York City Council) (the Court of\u00a0Appeals denied cert). The court in that case based its opinion on the\u00a0fact that the local law “amended the term limit provisions” without\u00a0“changing the term of office.”<\/p>\n
The law at issue in this case is different from what the Mayor wants\u00a0to pass because though it allows certain Councilmembers to serve an\u00a0extra term, it does not necessarily enable them to serve more than\u00a0eight years. If the purpose of term limits is to prevent politicians\u00a0from spending too much time in office, then this difference would seem\u00a0to be a hugely important one. Nonetheless, the language the court uses\u00a0may apply equally to the mayor’s proposed law. By “term of office” the\u00a0court seems to be referring to the length of a single term \u2013 something\u00a0that the Mayor’s proposed law would not address \u2013 and it contrasts\u00a0this with “amend[ing] the term limit provisions,” which is what the\u00a0Bloomberg law would do. The language here is likely sufficient to\u00a0allow the City Council to pass the Bloomberg-law, but it is important\u00a0to note that the issue is much closer than the media seems to be\u00a0presenting it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The FLoG Blog had some technical problems but is up and running again. I thought we’d take a closer look at the term limits issue in New York. Here is a little bit of research I did this morning (comments welcome!): It seems like the claim that the City Council can override the\u00a0voter-passed term limit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1950,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1950"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}