The New York Times reported today on the WFP’s newly launched campaign to keep the City Council and Mayor from extending term limits without the permission of voters who’ve approved term limits (twice!). Don’t forget to visit http://itsourdecision.org and send your message to the politicians!
Union-Backed Party Opposes Term Limits Plan
By Fernanda Santos | October 7, 2008, 3:06 pm
Updated, 5:39 p.m. | The Working Families Party began on Tuesday the labor community’s first major offensive against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to change term limit laws through legislation that would extend to three, from two, the number of terms the city’s elected officials can stay in office.
The party – which is backed by some of the city’s most powerful unions, like the United Federation of Teachers and 1199 S.E.I.U., the largest health care worker group in the state – has a simple objective: Let the mayor know that there are many people out there who are very unhappy about his course of action.
“If New Yorkers want to extend term limits, then Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council should allow voters to make that choice,” said Dan Cantor, the party’s executive director, on the steps of City Hall.
Mr. Cantor added: “This is not necessarily about where you stand on term limits or whether or not you think that Mike Bloomberg has been a good mayor. This about the rules of the game. And you don’t get to change them at the end of the fourth quarter just because your team wants to keep playing.”
The announcement came about an hour before the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, held a news conference inside City Hall to unveil the mayor’s bill, which was introduced at the Council meeting later in the afternoon, at the mayor’s request, by Councilman Simcha Felder of Brooklyn, an ally of Mr. Bloomberg’s since his early days in office. A rival bill, which would allow term limits to be changed only by referendum, was also introduced at the meeting, under the sponsorship of Councilman David I. Weprin of Queens.
Both bills will be referred to the Council’s Governmental Operations Committee, which is headed by Mr. Felder. The committee will hold public hearings on Oct. 16 and 17. The Council could vote on a final bill as early as Oct. 23.
Speaker Quinn has not taken a position recently on term limits, though she said last December that she was against changing them “through any mechanism,” as she put it. At the news conference on Tuesday, she said: “I will come to my position, but I feel, as speaker, that I need to have consultation with my members, and I need a little more time to do that to a level that I think is appropriate given the significance of this issue.”
The city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., a Democrat who intends to run for mayor next year, said in a statement:
Today, the New York City Council introduced two measures, one that would allow the Council and the Mayor to single-handedly grant themselves the ability to run for a third term. The other measure would allow New York City voters to make the decision.
The choice is clear: People must come before politics. It is inappropriate for the Mayor and City Council to pass legislation that ignores the will of the voters. A government should serve its people and not itself. New Yorkers deserve nothing less.
Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who also plans to run for mayor, called Mr. Felder’s bill “a back-room deal to extend term limits.” Mr. Weiner said in a statement:
New Yorkers around the city deserve hearings in their boroughs, and a normal process for considering this important legislation. But no amount of hearings by the Council can replace New Yorkers’ right to be heard. No matter what, they deserve the right to vote.
New Yorkers have twice enjoyed a vote on this matter. I believe the City Council should not rush to take New Yorkers’ right to vote away.
The mayor, who had more than once in the past denounced efforts to tinker with the city’s term limit laws, said last week that he supported an extension so that he could shepherd the city through the financial crisis. He said that it was too late to put a referendum question on the ballot this November and dismissed the notion of holding a special election in February to gauge the public’s view, arguing that the gravity of the economic downturn justified his choice for legislative action.
But the opposition has grown louder in recent days. On Monday, several council members spoke against the mayor’s bill at a Democratic caucus meeting, and then on Tuesday, the Working Families Party brought more than 100 of its members to the steps.
There was a palpable sense of resentment over the way Mr. Bloomberg negotiated his decision to run for a third term and the strategy he would employ to change the term limits law, which was twice affirmed by voters, in 1993 and 1996. Over the past few months, the mayor worked in private, reaching out to fellow billionaires and shoring up support for his bid among the publishers of the city’s three largest newspapers, all of which ran editorials endorsing his decision.
“The media and business elite in New York seem to not be willing to hear the voices of regular people,” Mr. Cantor said, accusing the publishers – Mortimer B. Zuckerman, of The Daily News; Rupert Murdoch, of the New York Post; and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., of The New York Times – of trying to create “a 21st century Tammany Hall.”
As part of its efforts, the party unveiled a Web site – www.itsourdecision.org – where voters can sign a petition against extending term limits through a bill. It has also organized an extensive grassroots campaign, mobilizing its members to knock on doors and call voters to ask them to pressure their Council members to vote against the mayor’s bill.
“Today we are saying no and encouraging all New Yorkers who believe that democracy belongs to them to log, to stand up and to be counted,” Mr. Cantor said.
The Working Families Party and Mr. Bloomberg have stood on opposite sides in the past, most recently in the three-way primary for a State Senate seat in Brooklyn, and in this fight, the party came away victorious. The mayor supported Councilman Felder, who lost to the Working Families Party candidate, Senator Kevin S. Parker.
Also on Wednesday, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein – one of Mr. Bloomberg’s top appointees – declined to take a position on the term limits debate.
“These are issues for the mayor and the City Council,” he said tersely at a press conference in Chelsea to promote the city’s pre-kindergarten programs. “I want to stay focused really right now on the status of the school system and the increase universal pre-K.”
Michael Barbaro and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting.
