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November 1, 2010
The Charter Commission's missed opportunity to address real change, and the "Morton's fork" faced by voters Tuesday on term limits, reform package
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder attempts to sift through the absurdly confusing, non-reformist Charter "reforms" on Tuesday's ballot. What's a voter to do?
New York City voters on Tuesday will turn over their ballots to see two ballot referenda in small type, the relatively minor but not unimportant results of a Charter Revision Commission, appointed by Mayor Mike Bloomberg, that, this summer, heard much concern about issues such as land use reform.
Instead, the commission devised a question on term limits that's quite cynical--the current three-term limit, enacted after the City Council did Bloomberg's bidding, would be replaced by the old two-term limit, but not apply to current incumbents.
And, rather than offer yes-no voting on several other issues, the commission--claiming it was told that ballot strictures required it--lumped seven disparate reform measures into one vote.
On term limits, cynicism time
Wrote Craig Gurian in a Remapping Debate commentary headlined And then they’ll say we ratified their scheme:
We won’t know the outcome, of course, for another week. But there is something that we can safely predict. If voters reject the [term limits] proposal, those apparently believing in the divine right of municipal officials to a third term will say: “See, voters really don’t want us limited to three terms.” If voters approve the proposals, they will describe the outcome as: “See, voters think that relaxing limits to permit three terms is a good idea.” Heads the New Royalists win; tails we lose.
Will press coverage do anything more than uncritically convey the spin that term limit extenders choose to rationalize the ultimate outcome? As the Journal’s Riley put it two years ago: “[T]here's something deeply disturbing about a local press corps that lets the political class get away with it.”
Posted by eric at November 1, 2010 10:39 AM