2000-01-15 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 01-15-00Page 15 of 59 HERKES: Even if their district wants them. YUEN: But, that’s the result of term limits, that no matter how popular the person may turn out to be, you always have to get rid of them. HERKES: I understand. YUEN: What I’m suggesting, though, is there’s not a study that tells you what the pros and cons are. It’s a decision that has to be made, whether it’s just going to be an eight year cap or whether it’s going to go potentially to sixteen years. RAY: George. MARTIN: The two-year hiatus, if someone is popular, gives them the opportunity to run again, and if they are that good, they’ll be re-elected. It’s just a comment. I guess a motion is in order to have Chris to write it as eight year cap in both manners; the person and the position, so that there be no finagling done, or say, well, they talked about the person, and as I heard mention over here, if you move district, then it changes. So the person and the position, eight year max. Now, we can still play with the 6-3, which I think is a great idea, and if we want to put a four-year, that, in itself, is a different issue. If we put four years on the at-large, no problem, but there’s still an eight year max, no matter which way you look at it. IRVINE: Eight consecutive, right? MARTIN: Consecutive, correct. RAY: Roland. HIGASHI: I don’t have a problem with eight consecutive years, upon adoption of this Amendment, where the at-large person would begin for eight consecutive years. I think we need to, kind of, establish the beginning date. If a person is already six years in office, it would preclude him from running for the at-large. MARTIN: Correct. HIGASHI: And I think we shouldn’t preclude anybody from running for office at the beginning. After that, eight consecutive years, I have no problem with that, if there is term limits. I’m one that probably proposed that no term limit as another Amendment, all by itself. I mean, it’s not tied in, just maybe have a term limit, but if the Amendment with no term limits would pass - RAY: We looked at this in all these different permutations and combinations because I introduced the four-year term limits, so how that would effect people in office and whatever, and one way you might look at that, Roland, is that if you’d been in office for three terms, or six years, the one exception would be you could run for an additional four-year term, because it’s really hard to make it fair for everybody, wherever they might be, and in whatever cycle. HERKES: Because it’s not fair. Basically, it’s not fair. RAY: I remember we couldn’t make it come out perfectly because of when the term limits had taken place, which, to the shock of everybody in office, was the day they were voted on in 1996, that’s when the 4 two-year terms started, and everybody had thought it was going to take place, or start, in the next election, but there was no language in regard to that, so actually, the clock started ticking on the 4 two-year terms in November, whatever, 1996. But anyway, trying to accommodate all those types of things, a similar discussion we had was you could create that one exception. Maybe that’s a fair way to do it so if somebody had been in office for six years, it wouldn’t preclude them from running for one at-large term. So that way, then if that happened, then they would be able to serve ten years vs. eight years. SANTANGELO: That happened anyway, when they set up the eight-year, because there was some people already on it. RAY: You know you can’t make it work out perfectly, but I’m just throwing that out there as a possible suggestion. HERKES: Can I ask Chris a question? Chris, has there ever been an enterprising legal challenge to term limits because voters have been disenfranchised? You’re taking away my opportunity to vote for a candidate that I want. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 01-15-00.html7/1/2011