Charter Reform: Term Limits and Non-Partisan Elections
I’ve written before about the types of change I’d like to see in local elections. I’ve talked about trying to limit contributions to the amount of the job’s annual salary and some other things that have less of a chance of getting passed than me driving a Hummer. And that ain’t gonna happen.
In 2004 we also saw a series of sweeping Charter reform measures that would have significantly altered the structure of the city’s government. It was too much all at once, and frankly, not necessary. Some say we have a weak mayor system while at the same time saying the aldermen have lost any power they had. Huh? We can’t have a weak mayor and a weak legislative body at the same time. Which is it? I think they have a give and take roll that might actually be acceptable.
What is not acceptable is the idea that once you are elected you can stay in the job until you decide not to run and then you hand the baton off to your hand-picked successor. This discourages citizen participation in the process either as voters, involved citizens or even as potential candidates.
Two fairly common changes to the City’s Charter should be brought to the voters: term limits (2 terms/8 years) and non-partisan elections. We should apply these across the board to everyone from the aldermen to city-wide offices such as License Collector & Mayor.
St. Louis is not the Democratic town people seem to believe it is. Sure, nearly every candidate files as a Democrat but that has little to do with which party they align with nationally. Listen to a number of our “Democrat” candidates — they are conservative right-wing Republicans. We are simply fooling ourselves to thinking we are a strong democratic base here. The truth is voters tend to vote for a Democrat in city elections so therefore candidates file as Democrats. If we take away party affiliation then voters will have to do more than vote for the candidate endorsed by the ward’s committee people.
Non-Partisan Elections
From the National League of Cities:
According to a 2001 survey, 77% of the responding cities have nonpartisan elections, and 23% have partisan elections.
Not that we have to do what other cities have done but I think the topic is worth considering. I reviewed the NLC chart listing the top 30 cities by population and found the following:
The cities with partisan elections are:
New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Charlotte and Tucson.
Cities with a Mayor-Council form and non-partisan elections are:
Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit, Jacksonville, Columbus, Memphis, Milwaukee, Boston, Nashville, El Paso, Seattle, Denver, and Portland.
Cities with a Council-Manager form and non-partisan elections are:
Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas, San Antonio, San Jose, Austin, Fort Worth, and Oklahoma City.
In researching this topic I found some reports that indicate that San Francisco’s elections are now non-partisan but I have not been able to confirm that. Efforts are underway in NYC to make their elections non-partian as well. Given that we have no real competition in our local elections this would open the system to more people.
Term Limits
The National Civic League website includes a page on Term Limits. From the “pro” argument:
A seat open every couple of terms will create more competition, since challengers will not be discouraged from taking on a long-time, seemingly invincible opponent. PACS and other campaign contributors will not automatically assume that giving to an incumbent is the only safe investment.
The site does a good job of listing both pros and cons. One of the arguments against term limits say on the national level is that you can just vote for the other guy if you don’t want someone in office too long. Well, in our city elections that often consist of only a single candidate, that argument doesn’t work. A main argument is to have citizen-legislators, not career politicians, running our city. We need to limit all local office holders to two terms in office. After 8 years in office an Alderman can run for another office such as License Collector and hold that job for two terms before becoming Mayor for another 8 years. Term limits allow for an upgrade path but not a stay in place and rule 1/28 of the city like a dictator.
Like non-partisan elections, I think this is a good discussion topic for reforming city government.
Another Idea – Mixed Districts
The National League of Cities has an interesting page on having at-large vs. district elections for a city council. To my surprise, 38.2% of large cities use a mixed at-large & district system while 45.5% use a district system as we do with our wards. I think having some at-large seats in addition to ward seats is an interesting concept.
I think we need to put term limits and non-partian elections on a future ballot for city voters to decide if that would be a way to reform our city government. What do you think?
– Steve
What’s wrong with PARISAN’s elections? It’s a lovely city, surely their elections are just fine. Maybe a bottle of wine, or some cheese, or if they’re really mad a stale bagguette gets thrown, but nothing too serious.
[REPLY Thanks, I’ve corrected the spelling in the headline. – SLP]
I’ve heard that at-large districts were set up in some places to reduce the probability that a minority could be elected.
[REPLY – Yes, all at-large could exclude some. That is why a mix seems interesting. Having some at-large representatives allows them to look out for the bigger picture rather than smaller in-district details. – SLP]
Some in leadership have opposed at-large seats because they tend to lead to the formation of candidate slates, less acountable to city-wide interests.
For example, if you had six districts and six at-large seats, you could wind up with a slate of six at-large candidates from high-voting southwest St. Louis all being elected.
But how will the unions be able to control the elected officials if there are term limits?
[REPLY – Hopefully they’d have no more control than the CEOs of the big corporations. We should get the system as close as possible to being controlled by the citizens. – SLP]
Unless they benefit the African American community in way that is so clear that it cannot be argued, no charter reform acts will ever pass.
And perhaps that is how it should be.
Steve, you’re definitely headed in the right direction. Keep on pushing, I support you!
Since I’m most familiar with Denver’s system (which seems to work pretty well), here are some of their details:
· Similar in population to St. Louis (±500,000).
· Non partisan races, term-limited to 2 terms/8 years.
· If no one candidate receives 51% of the vote, the top two candidates have a run-off election ± a month later.
· 11 districts (versus St. Louis’s 28 wards) + 2 at-large members, for a total of 13 seats.
· Council members are paid well ($73,512 for the 12 “regular” members and $82,320 for the Council President), so they can devote full time to council business, including weekly meetings + committee meetings + meeting with constituents and neighborhood groups. They also receive an office allowance that usually results in a storefront office in each district with ±2 paid staff to respond to constituent concerns.
Plus, you can go to http://www.denvergov.org/CityCouncil/63faq344.asp#link5 for more information.
With only two at-large seats, the bulk of the power remains in the individual districts. Historically, the at-large members have had more of a city-wide view, while district representatives are obviously more focused on issues within their own districts. One current at-large member formerly served in both the state house and senate, and sees service on city council as a lateral move. In theory, it gives each resident access to three council members who should (may) be responsive to their concerns. In reality, since the at-large members get 11 times the volume of calls and emails, they tend to ignore the small stuff.
With only 11 districts (versus the 28 wards here), each council member has 2½ times the number of constituents, “problems”, “challenges” and issues that each alderperson has here, resulting in a lot less micro-management. They do get to deal with the same issues as the aldermen do here, but there’s less pressure to “solve” every problem that comes through the door.
The at-large members are not viewed as a way to limit minority participation. While the black population in Denver is a much smaller percentage of the population than it is here, the hispanic population is large and growing. In the public schools, whites are a minority. The ethnicity of the current city council members reflect their districts. There are 3 hispanics, 2 blacks and 8 whites currently serving on City Council (and/or 4 men and 7 women). And yes, both at-large members are whites, but if I remember correctly, there weren’t any minorities who ran for these two seats in the last election.
Like I said, it seems to work pretty well. I’d definitely be in favor of moving in that direction here.
We have citizen-legislators now. Several if not most of the aldermen have another job. Unfortuantely only people with flexible carreers can run.
I don’t think term limitations solves the real problem. People are upset that their legislator is in power, not listening to them, and vertually scares away all reasonable competition at election time. I think people jump to term limitations as the quick solution, however, I think it creates an even worse problem. Just as people are getting the experience to operate efficiently and effectively they only have a year or two until they have to leave. Further, I’m concerned inexperienced legislators will propose worse laws or be more easily manipulated by lobbiest.
Rather than get rid of incumbents, let’s try to level the playing field for challengers. Instant runoff voting would be a small step. Giving challengers better access to voter roles might be another. More citizens getting involved in the system would be a big help.
[REPLY – We still have career politicians, even if some of them hold other jobs. We don’t have smart business people getting into office for the short term as part of their civic duty. We have folks getting into office and becoming part of the system until, and only until, they decide to retire or run for another office.
The instant runoff voting looks interesting to me after reading http://www.instantrunoff.com/ This may encourage others to run but as long as you have a single candidate it doesn’t do much good.
When I ran last year I received a copy of the voter registration records and was able to purchase the records in a digital format so I am not sure what access you are looking for. – SLP]
I think it actually would be possible for the executive and legislative branches of city government to become simultaneously less powerful. How? If government as such became less powerful in relation to private business interests. With Civic Progress as strong here as it is, I’d say that this may exactly what is happening/has happened.
The City of St. Louis had at-large aldermanic elections until 1941. At that time, ward-by-ward representation was considered a significant reform, because it was thought to bring the aldermen closer to the people.
That was also the year the Civil Service was first introduced to city government (at least in the departments reporting to the mayor).
At one time, the city had a bicameral (two-houses) legislature; that was eliminated in the 1914 City Charter (the one still in effect today).
Most (but not all) larger cities that have at-large council members, non-partisan elections, and/or city managers, are located in the Sunbelt or the West. They don’t have the same kind of entrenched legacies of political machines like we do.