By Dan Murphy
For those of you who thought that the issue of term limits was resolved last month when the City Council voted 5-2 to modify the city’s term limits law from eight years to 12 years, think again. Some residents in Yonkers may have been asked to sign a petition that would place the question of modifying term limits on the ballot in November 2019.
The petition reads, “I hereby request that the Yonkers City Council adopt a local law to place a proposition for the approval of Yonkers Local Law 12-2018 (term limits modification) upon the ballot in the City of Yonkers at a special election… or to place a proposition on the ballot on Nov. 5, 2019.”
First, the group collecting these signatures, Yonkers Committee for Term Limits Consistency, must collect at least 4,000 valid signatures, or 10 percent of the voters in the last governor’s election. The city clerk will then review the signatures and determine if they are valid.
If the signatures are valid, the matter will return to the City Council for review, and the council may decide to hold another vote, this time to decide whether to overturn its previous vote and put the matter up for referendum.
If the council votes the same way it did to modify term limits, it will reject that proposal. But even if council members vote it down, the item would be placed on the ballot in November.
Currently, sources tell Yonkers Rising that the committee collecting signatures is very short of its goal of 4,000 signatures, with the deadline to file petitions coming at the beginning of next week – 45 days since the council passed the law, or when the mayor signed the law, depending on what legal view you concur with.
If the matter gets on the ballot, then here is where things get interesting: Voters in Yonkers could be going to the polls next year to vote for Mayor Mike Spano, assuming he decides to run for a third term, and voting on the referendum to modify term limits to 12 years.
If Spano is re-elected and the term limits modification is rejected by the voters, legal opinions differ on what happens next. Some believe the referendum does not affect Spano, but only candidates in the next election.
Others believe the referendum does affect Spano, and that if the voters reject any changes to term limits, he would be forced to step down at the end of his second term in 2019, and the deputy mayor would become the temporary mayor until a special election is held.
Case law in this matter is Molinaro vs. Giuliani, which ruled on the legality of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg running for a third term. What happened in NYC is different from what happened in Yonkers because Bloomberg and the NYC Council agreed to give Bloomberg a third term, and then reverted back to the two-term limit rule.
Supporters of the new Yonkers term limits law question whether the public really opposes the changes made, as many critics of the council’s decision claim. “If they can’t get 4,000 signatures, then how much opposition is really out there to extending term limits?” asked one City Hall insider.
Opponents of the term limits change say the difficulties in getting the 4,000 signatures are because of the cold weather and the holiday season. They also claim that a legal challenge to the term limits vote could still come because the City Council passed the law at a special council meeting and that any item placed on a special council meeting require a unanimous council vote.
The vote of the Rules Committee was not unanimous, but was 5-2 to place term limits modification on for the special council meeting.
Yonkers awaits to see if any petitions will be filed.
