Much has been made recently, both here and here and elsewhere, about the decision on the part of two of our termed-out City Council members to run for third consecutive terms in office. Normally the desire on the part of qualified community members to continue to serve as Council members would be applauded, regardless of whether one agrees with the candidate’s particular political leanings or not.

But many are taking exception to this decision on the part of Vice Mayor/9th District Council member Val Lerch and 7th District Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga. Many feel that because the people of Long Beach saw fit to pass term limit legislation that stipulates a maximum of two full terms for our Mayoral and Council offices, both Vice Mayor Lerch and Councilwoman Reyes Uranga should each be content with the two terms they each have served and step down and let others have an opportunity to serve our community in this way.

Those taking exception are also saying that by running write-in campaigns these candidates are, in effect, blatantly ignoring the will of the people as expressed in the term limits legislation enacted in Long Beach in 1992.

It’s not unreasonable to believe that most who feel this way also happen to be among those who are the least content with the performance, the service or the politics of either candidate. Fair enough. Being discontent with this or that elected official and publicly voicing that discontent is every citizen’s right, after all.

The challenge, unfortunately, is that our City’s term limits legislation is codified in Section 214(a) of our City Charter. But immediately afterward, Section 214(b) also codifies the exception to the term limit rule, allowing voters to write-in any candidate of their choice and allowing candidates who would otherwise be termed out to run additional campaigns as write-in candidates.

Many are asking what in the world we, in Long Beach, were thinking when we included both the rule and the exception in the very same Section of our City Charter… why we didn’t simply establish mandatory term limits and be done with it?

The answer is found in two places. 1. Section 1910 of our City Charter, which stipulates, in part, that “…all municipal elections shall be held in accordance with the provisions of the Elections Code of the State of California governing municipal elections” and 2. State Elections Code Section 15340, which states:
“Each voter is entitled to write the name of any candidate for any public office, including that of President and Vice President of the United States, on the ballot of any election.”

In short, we, in Long Beach, can assert our desire for term limits for local elected offices, so long as we also abide by State law that permits write-in candidacies. State Election Law necessarily controls on this matter and cannot be circumvented purely as a matter of local preference. This is precisely how former Mayor Beverly O’Neil and former Councilmember Jackie Kell were able to run their write-in campaigns in 2002 and 2006, respectively.

I am personally opposed to the idea of mandatory term limits. I think they can prove counter-productive to good governance and I believe they encourage a lack of active and well-informed participation in our system of self-government.

In my opinion, if the electorate is sufficiently well informed and actively participating in the process of electing their representatives, those representatives that perform poorly will either be removed from office mid-term (through the Recall process) or they will at the very least not be re-elected once their existing term has expired. By these more responsible means we effectively limit the terms of poor representatives.

Conversely, if a person is serving his or her constituents well and faithfully as they swore an oath to do, and they desire to continue so serving, the people should have the freedom to allow that person to continue to do so. Through the write-in process that is codified in State and local law, the people do, indeed, enjoy that freedom.

Term limits give the more poorly informed and less participant members of the electorate the excuse they need to continue to be so. They can, and often do, rest easy, confident that this or that poor-representative-de-jour will be termed out eventually and, so, they need not trouble themselves overmuch about it one way or the other.

I very much welcome your questions and your comments.

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