Gerson makes a case for term limits

City Council Representative Alan Gerson gave a great justification in Downtown Express why term limits should not be extended to pander to a powerful personality:

After 9/11, the previous mayor sought to extend his term without an election. Now, after losing the referendum, the Charter put the Council in the awkward position of deciding whether incumbents should be allowed to run for a third term. From the start I had resolved to decide my position on the extension of term limits not on the basis of the status of the mayor or myself or any elected official, but rather on the basis of input from constituents combined with the rigorous application of democratic principles. Government procedures must rest on a foundation of principle, not personality. This keeps with my long advocacy of governmental transparency and reform at all levels, from community boards to the judiciary to the City Council.

A great argument for term limits! After all the scandals of the City Council giving money to fictitious organizations, after the mayor pressuring nonprofits to campaign for him, after....

...oh, sorry! That was Gerson's justification in favor of keeping the scandal-ridden city council in power. I guess his ideas of "principles, not personality" is rewarding Bloomberg's heavy-handed tactics.

Hmm. Mao said something like "Power comes from the barrel of a billionaire's pocketbook." Maybe Gerson was referring to that principle.

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DFNYC Keeps the heat up on Bloomberg

Democracy for NYC (DFNYC) is working hard to support Obama, but even while the national election is coming to its final moments, the group still takes time to talk about the term limits controversy. Here is a quote from their recent email:

City Council Voted for Repeal of Voter-Enacted Term Limits Last Thursday, the New York City Council voted on Mayor Bloomberg's bill to extend term limits, despite the fact that New York City voters have twice approved of a limit of two terms in referenda votes. The change allows Mayor Bloomberg and approximately two thirds of council members facing term limits next year to run for a third term. Before the council vote, Democracy for NYC took a poll on Mayor Bloomberg's proposal and 78% of respondents (93% of DFNYC members) were against Mayor Bloomberg's proposal.
 

Now, a coalition of grassroots groups and elected officials is joining together to support candidates who will challenge the "Bloomberg 29" in 2009. The Council vote was 29 in favor, 22 against. Please visit our website soon for more details on this project: http://dfnyc.org/. In the next 5 days, we are absolutely committed to electing Senator Obama, strengthening the majority in Congress and taking back the State Senate. But after Nov. 4th, we are committed to strengthening democracy right here in New York City, and we will hear from candidates that are willing to challenge incumbents who voted for the Mayor's bill to overrule the voters.

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Monday Morning Workout By Henry J. Stern

The Monday Morning Workout By Henry J. Stern writes about the next step in Bloomberg's initiative to overturn turn limits:

The next episode in the term limits drama will take place Monday, November 3, 2008, the morning when Mayor Bloomberg holds the legally required public hearing on the Charter amendment extending term limits, which was passed by the City Council on October 23.

The hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. The site is the Blue Room of City Hall, where proceedings of this nature usually take place. All those who appear and ask to speak have traditionally been given the opportunity to do so. Notice of the hearing was first published in Wednesday's City Record.

The article also summarizes some of the recent editorials, including these:

The Times, Oct. 22, TERM LIMITS AND THE COUNCIL. The lede: "The City Council is expected to vote on Thursday on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to revise New York City’s term-limits law. The proposal would allow the mayor and most of the city’s elected officials to run for a third four-year term. We urge the Council to approve it."

Daily News, Oct. 23, EMPOWER THE VOTERS. The lede: "The man or woman who is elected mayor in 2009 will be called on to make tough decisions that will affect the lives and pocketbooks of New Yorkers in ways they haven't seen in years. The city is on the verge of plunging off a financial cliff because Wall Street tax revenues are virtually kaput. The books are already several billion dollars in the red."

The Post, A FATEFUL COUNCIL VOTE, Oct. 23, The lede: "The City Council today is expected to take up legislation permitting Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials to seek a third term in office. There are two ways to look at term limits: As a one-size-fits-all exercise in theory-driven political purity: Too many pols hang around for too long, because the people don't know what's good for them and continue to re-elect them. Or, as an artificial, potentially destructive impediment to keeping truly extraordinary public servants in office, especially in times of crisis."

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Tensions Rise at City Hall

In closed-door meetings over the last few days that occasionally escalated into shouting, Ms. Quinn has told the mayor’s aides to back off a plan that would change how hundreds of programs for the elderly are financed, a proposal that has infuriated several council members.

....and that's the most recent word from the NY Times about Bloomberg meeting with his allies. These are council members who pretended to believe the contorted logic that the best way to give the voters choice was to annul their previous choice of voting for term limits. And now just a few days later, here is the situation:

Two lawmakers who voted for Mr. Bloomberg’s term limits legislation, James Vacca and Maria del Carmen Arroyo, both of the Bronx, immediately expressed their anger over the plans for the seniors programs to Ms. Quinn. Mr. Vacca said he told the speaker’s staff members this week that “if we don’t fight this, the Council will be the emperor with no clothes.”

OMG! Who knew that the Council was an emperor with no clothes!!

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg will not be re-elected to a third term (if he runs for it).

Rock Hackshaw has followed up his recent post term limits with a new one, Mayor Michael Bloomberg will not be re-elected to a third term (if he runs for it). He makes several predictions, a few have already come true:

I expect that when the issues around the economic crisis sinks in, and when they begin to affect the city’s budget and attendant services in extreme ways; Bloomberg’s ratings will sink even lower. He will have little time to prevent the freefall, since the election is one year away. It is evident that the mayor will have to raise taxes and fees to increase revenue flow in the coming months; these won’t be popular measures.

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Deliberately missing the point here? Multiple posts from Room 8

Room 8 has a couple recent blog postings about the extension of Bloomberg's mayorality.


Rock Hackshas started out with Are they deliberately missing the point here? (Part one)

I awaited the public hearings, hoping to get some intelligent arguments that would justify the one-term (for now) extension; given that there is nothing left to prevent these scholars from overturning term limits all together (unless the courts reverse themselves).

Okay, so we are in an economic downturn; so what? As a city, state, nation and world, we have survived worse.

He continues:

These elites, pseudo-elites and wannabee elites truly believe in their arrogance, that they are the only ones -not the voters- capable of making this call. In their ass-kissing heads and mind-sets, only Michael Bloomberg can save this city from the impending fiscal crisis. Well; let me tell them now, that this city will be up, around and still strong: long after Michael Bloomberg is buried and gone.

This prompted a response by nymaverick who wanted to get to the nuts-and-bolts of how to throw the bums out:

Draw 'em a picture, Rock, in which they throw out those bums.

If there were ever polls to be believed, then believe the ones that say most of New York City believes their members of City Council last week showed their constituencies exactly what they think: That come November, voters exist to keep them in bespoke suits and taxpayer money.

Are they deliberately missing the point here? (Part one) >>

Draw 'em a picture, Rock >>

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Bloomberg's Term-Limits Coup: Heroes, Villains, and Wimps

Tom Robbins offers up some strong view in the Village Voice:

So much for New York City sophisticates. Last week's rush by 29 self-inflated council members to gut term-limits laws—approved by voters in two separate referendums—was the kind of thing that's supposed to happen only in countries south of the border, or those with "-stan" at the end of their names.

He offers suspicious examples of secretive manipulation:

De Blasio predicted that Bloomberg and Council Speaker Chris Quinn's scheming and dealing to force-feed the bill to wavering council members last week will eventually be discovered and exposed. I'm not so sure.

For instance, who was that mystery man sitting in the Subway sandwich shop across from City Hall on the first day of the hearings? The guy with the cash-filled envelope doling out dollars to those who showed up early to grab front-row seats and wave pro-Bloomberg signs? One likely suspect, a well-practiced Brooklyn campaign worker, denied it. "It's nothing to do with me, man," he insisted. The search continues.

So does the hunt for the telephone bank that routed pro-Bloomberg calls directly into the offices of council foes of the mayor's bill. Who paid for that? Not us, said an administration official who suggested a friendly labor group was behind it.

Read Bloomberg's Term-Limits Coup: Heroes, Villains, and Wimps

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Term limit is Hakeem dream

The Brooklyn Paper reports on Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries' efforts regarding term limits:

A Brooklyn assemblyman will now try to do what the City Council refused: Let the people decide about term limits.

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries (D–Fort Greene) will introduce legislation next week that would require any changes to term limit laws — like the one passed by the City Council last week — to be decided by a public referendum. "

Not all critics of the mayor are pleased:

"I am concerned about the state weighing in on what is a city political issue," said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union.

"The state exercises a great amount of control over the city of New York and I'm hesitant to support another encroachment over the city to manage itself."

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Increasing voter choice by overturning voter choice

"By passing this bill, we are increasing voter choice," said Christine Quinn as she lead the charge to give Mayor Bloomberg a third term. The voters decided twice to limit the mayor to two terms.

That's a very interesting way to increase voter choice- by nullifying it.