Fireworks likely on term limits law

It won’t be the Fourth of July, but fireworks are likely to fly as the City Council holds their first public hearings on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial bill to extend term limits from two to three terms.
“I expect that there will be a lot of angry people and rightly so,” said Queens City Councilmember John Liu, about the public hearings on Thursday, October 16 and Friday, October 17, respectively.
Liu, who is term-limited out in 2009 and planning a run for citywide office in 2009, does not support the concept of term limits, but he believes that voters should be the ones to overturn the law instead of the Council doing it via legislation.
Meanwhile Mayor Bloomberg picked up an expected, but critical, ally for his legislation when City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced that she would support the mayor’s bill to extend term limits for a third term.
“Given the level of economic tumult that exists not just in New York but in the world, I have decided to change my position because I believe the opportunity, the potential of consistent leadership by this Council and this mayor would be in the best interest of the city,” Quinn said.
However, Quinn’s support, which is an about-face from comments she made about the issue months ago, does not mean the mayor’s bill will sail thorough the City Council.
In a NY 1 poll, 19 Councilmembers have said that they are against extending term limits while 15 have already announced support for extending term limits. That leaves 17 Councilmembers who will likely decide the fate of whether Bloomberg and other city elected officials will have their term limits extended.
In Queens, where all but two Councilmembers - Thomas White Jr. and Anthony Como’s seat - are term limited out in 2009, many Councilmembers have spoken out against the idea of extending the term limits through the mayor’s bill.
“The issue of extending term limits has gone to the people twice through public referendum, and any revisiting of the issue should go back to the people,” said City Councilmember James Gennaro, who is currently running for State Senator Frank Padavan’s seat in northern Queens. “If brought before the Council, I would go with the will of the people and vote no.”
City Councilmember Leroy Comrie supports the extension and believes that 12 years (three 4-year terms) is the minimum the limits should be. He also said that the original referendum putting the term limits in place was done out of spite and vindictiveness so referendums are not always the answer.
“Referendums [often] appeal to emotions not to issues,” Comrie said.
Meanwhile, City Councilmember Joseph Addabbo does not support term limits, but he also believes that changing the term limits through a bill is wrong. Addabbo said the process to do that is a public referendum and that is already in place if voters want to change the law.
“We’re throwing that process out the window,” Addabbo said referring to trying to change the term limits through the Council.