2004-03 Council Member Term Limits Article III, Section 3-2, Hawaii County Charter

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position against counting terms to which persons were elected following the 1996 General Election. There is a legitimate question relating to terms to which persons were elected to in 1996 because of the combination of three unusual omissions by the 1994-1996 Council: 1 . Lack of a stated effective date; 2 . Lack of explicit and complete transitional provisions relating to persons elected in 1996 (as stated below, Congress and the State Constitutional Convention both included such provisions when they proposed term limits for the President, Governor and Lieutenant Governor) ; and 3 . Lack of any relevant legislative history. Although none of these omissions, either individually or collectively, would appear to jeopardize the validity of the term limit, they do create doubt relating to the amendment' s applicability prior to the 1998 General Election. III . Sources of Problem A. Deviation from Federal and State Constitutional Models. Congress, when it drafted what became the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1951, which prohibits anyone from being elected President more than twice5, included language relating to the person holding office when the amendment was proposed and to the person holding office when it eventually became law. By doing so, Congress anticipated and eliminated implementation problems and it provided the electorate and candidates with fair notice of the amendment' s effect. 6 The Hawaii Constitutional Convention of 1978, when it drafted a proposed amendment to Article V of the Hawaii Constitution limiting the number of terms to which a person may be elected Governor or Lieutenant Governor, ' followed .the concept of the 22nd amendment (limit on being elected.) . It also followed the example of Congress by including in the State Constitution a clear provision (Section 4, Article XVIII) 8 on how the amendment would affect persons elected simultaneously with the approval of the amendment. It did so, presumably, for the same reasons Congress included a transitional provision in the constitutional amendment relating to the President. R 2 -