After Prolonging Their Tenure, Councilmembers Turn on Mayor

There's some very interesting commentary coming from Henry J. Stern's column. His most recent installation is called "More Attitude, Less Gratitude." An excerpt:

Councilmembers are specifically forbidden by the Charter (Section 38) from extending their own terms, but at the time the Charter was adopted (1989), term limits were not an issue, so there is no direct prohibitory language in the Charter. Similar provisions governing elections are protected from political tampering by that Section, and it was the clear intent of the Charter drafters not to allow politicians to interfere with the election process by changing the ground rules themselves.

Here's more from the end of the article:

Footnotes: All four Councilmembers who are seeking election this year voted No. They are McMahon (running for Congress), Addabbo and Gennaro (running for the State Senate) and Como (running for a one-year term as Councilmember). When I was on the Council, we used to call that 'Going off the reservation'. It was all right if you received a pass from the leadership.

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