Say what you want about our mayor and his modus operandi but he has gotten a few things right over his tenure. I am not a big fan of his but I don’t dislike him either. He was absolutely correct with his ban on cigarettes in certain public establishments; taking the flack in order to get that policy into law. He was correct in putting public education on the front burner; even though I feel that his successes in this area were somewhat exaggerated: but you can’t deny that he has genuinely tried to deal with the issue. I think that in principle he was correct to suggest some type of congestion pricing formula for Manhattan’s traffic congestion problem; hopefully the details would be worked out before pigs grow wings. His positions on the issues surrounding illegal firearms (guns, gun shows, gun sales, etc.) are sensible and timely; and there are other things I could commend him on. Of course there are also many others that I could critique him on; like his police department that’s totally out of control, and the fact that big developers have surely enjoyed his tenure in profitable ways; but that’s not the issue here. You can always view my column in the archives (where I called him a leprechaun), to get a better sense of how I felt about him just a year ago.
Lately, the issues surrounding “term limits” have reared their ugly heads again. And maybe some intrepid reporters like Azi Payabarah, Ben Smith and/or Helen Klein, could one day dig deep enough, to find out whether or not Speaker Christine Quinn did promise to overturn term limits (legislatively), when trying to secure supportive votes during her speakership bid. You see, if she did make some open (or “wink-wink”) promises, then she has reneged on her colleagues. Yesterday-while taking a page directly out of Hilary Clinton’s playbook-Christine Quinn came out fully against overturning term limits. Did someone say: mayoral bid coming? In recent past Christine had been quite vocal in her opposition to term limits. Did the Angel Gabriel suddenly appear out of her mayoral dreams, with a convincing argument? Or was it intense polling on the issue?
It was only a few weeks ago, that councilmember Weprin (Queens), publicly suggested that the council could “tweak” term limits through legislation. What he meant was that the council members could have voted to extend the limit from eight years to twelve (not totally overturn it); implying that they were in the right to do this legislatively, despite the fact that two referendums on the issue were voted down by the voters more than a decade ago.
So here comes Mayor Bloomberg, with a sensible idea as to how we all can deal with this issue finally. He is suggesting that next year we should put it up for referendum again; this time closing any legislative loophole which might enable council members to overrule the voters on this issue at some point in the future. I think this is a great idea; I hope the council agrees. This would be their last chance to convince voters to embrace their selfish position. Once the wording is tight, we can rest assured that term limits will never be overturned unless by referendum. Personally, I believe the voters will nail their coffins shut once and for all; but that’s just me thinking wishfully I guess. What do you think?
Stay tuned-in folks.